This is how people leave before they go anywhere.
from Chapter 8.
I did not leave all at once.
I left in fragments.
By the time I understood what was happening, my body already knew what my mind was still resisting. I was tired in a way sleep did not fix. My nervous system stayed braced—alert for shifts in tone, silences, sudden warmth or cold. Even when things were “good,” I waited for them to turn.
This is how people leave before they go anywhere.
I stayed logged in, stayed present, stayed responsive—but something in me had stepped back. I stopped volunteering reassurance. I stopped overexplaining. I noticed when affection returned not because it felt safe, but because it felt expected.
I was learning the pattern.
And once you see a pattern, it stops feeling personal.
What kept me from leaving completely was not love—at least not in the way I once understood it. It was fear. Fear of disappearance. Fear of collapse. Fear of having invested so much of myself only to be erased the moment I stopped showing up. In Second Life, relationships do not fade. They end abruptly, the instant one person logs out and does not return.
There is no shared space to grieve.
No ambient presence.
No quiet coexisting after conflict.
Connection exists only while both people remain visible. Absence is not neutral—it is definitive. Logging out does not signal rest or distance. It signals removal. And once removed, there is nothing left to return to unless the other person allows it.
Leaving does not feel like walking away.
It feels like vanishing.
So instead, I practiced leaving emotionally while remaining physically present. I logged in less. I answered more slowly. I reclaimed pieces of my attention. I told myself I was being cautious, not disengaged.
This is what trauma bonding looks like from the inside: awareness without autonomy. Insight without movement. The mind knows; the body hesitates.
I did not yet trust myself to be alone.
Between Stillness & Storm 