Hot and Cold
December 18th, 2025
- I went on a third date with C. She's sweet and warm. Sometimes I wonder.
- Today I pulled away. I went cold. I try to not do it, but somehow I did it. I am accountable for my emotions.
- My body pulled away and I just shut down. I could not talk. I dissociated.
- She still wants to go on another date with me. But the words that come to mind aren't all that right.
- They're coming to protect myself, they're telling me I'm not enough, that I need to shut her out.
- The words that come to mind are telling me to push her away and to leave. To try again later.
- I wonder why my body does not trust the bond I am forming.
- I am scared of what I'll do. I am so sad. I don't know why I am this way. I am afraid.
- I am deeply afraid.
- Can I just trust someone? I wonder why I can't trust her. Why can't I trust the people I'm dating? I suppose there's just too much history. My body is just wired in an inhumane function.
- Do I want her? Do I not want her? I miss her already. I don't miss her at all. My emotions are all over the place I suppose. It's just so much. It's just so overwhelming.
- Ultimately I am accountable for the way I feel. It is my responsibility to get my needs addressed, though at times it is difficult to voice them. I often become selectively mute at times like these, it's hard for me to speak and get the words out.
The reason why there is no good advice for a disorganized attachment style is because the words I need to hear and believe aren't the ones I want to hear and believe.
It's that I need to be accountable for how I feel. I accept how I feel. I think most everybody, all humans, some time or another, feel that fear for intimacy and that fear of all of it. Sure. Yes, we all feel that. It's part of life.
I am not special in any circumstance for feeling that fear of intimacy, but I am certainly accountable. I need to be honest and straightforward with the way I feel.
Basically, I need to own my feelings. It's like a horse, my horse may be kicking and screaming, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the horse is not kicking and screaming, that'd be irresponsible. It's up to me to tell the people around me what's happening and that the horse is kicking and screaming.
Sure, I cannot control how I feel. I cannot control my body and mind and all interpretation, I can only be here for the ride.
It is my life. The most successful people I have found are those that are accountable and responsible for everything that happens in their lives. Especially the hard conversations and the bad conversations.
To be clear, I am not at fault for how I feel and what I am. I am not fault for all the systems that have deterministically made me the person I am with the beliefs I hold about the world. But it is my repsonsibility going forward to own what I am and the beliefs I have about the world, because it is me. I am the owner of this body.
I am accountable for my emotions, all of it. I realized that healing from disorganized attachment style really isn't getting rid of my feelings, it's accepting and addressing them seriously as one of my needs.
Ownership
Jocko writes in Extreme Ownership that he feels guilty for people on his team dying. I feel for Jocko.
From an outside perspective I don't blame him at all though. Put anyone in that situation as leader and you're fighting a war—the only logical outcome is that someone is going to die. But I respect it.
But if I were to go in that position, I'd never take that fault. It'd eat me up, I might seriously hurt myself if I blamed myself for someone else's death. It's a lot to swallow and process that someone else could die because of what I decided.
Separating fault and accountability or responsibility is probably the most important distinction I've made in my life. It's the egoless move, and it moves towards a self that's more consistent and accepting.
I think all of my troubles are because I cannot accept the world as it is. The present as it is now.