Travel Was My Avoidance Disguised as Freedom

Reclaiming My Rhythm: Day 23 of My Cycle

I’ve never thought of myself as avoidant.

I’m the one who dives in. Who asks the hard questions. Who wants to feel all the feelings and name them out loud. I’ve spent the past few years working through the anxious parts of myself, learning how to regulate, how to express, how to hold connection with more steadiness. So today in therapy, when the conversation turned toward avoidance, I was surprised to see how much of it has been living quietly beneath my self-perception.

It’s not the kind of avoidance that looks like silence or withdrawal. It’s the kind that masks itself as care, or as productivity, or as generosity. It shows up when I’m on the phone with a friend long past when my body is asking for rest. It whispers, Just a few more minutes. You don’t want to lose them. It tells me that if I set a boundary around my time, around my energy, I might lose the closeness we’ve built. That if I say no, I’ll be left behind.

This fear isn’t new. It has roots. Deep ones. I can trace it all the way back to childhood, talking with my mom for hours, listening to her vent about my dad, her voice charged with frustration and grief. Every time I tried to pull away, even gently, it turned into an accusation: No one cares about me. Maybe I should just leave.
And when I was really young, she would actually threaten to leave.
That fear, of her pain, of her absence, of being responsible for her emotions, etched itself into my nervous system.

So now, years later, when I find myself resisting the urge to hang up or say, Hey, I actually need to go to sleep, I realize I’m not just avoiding a boundary. I’m trying to protect a bond. I’m trying to make sure no one feels like she did. That old programming runs so deep: my needs will hurt people. My boundaries will push them away.

But I’m learning now, slowly, gently, that reclaiming my time is not rejection. That honoring my own limits is not abandonment. That I can’t continue to deprioritize myself in order to preserve connection. Because the cost is too high: my sleep, my focus, my clarity, my emotional presence. I’ve started noticing how often my boundaries aren’t about distance, they’re about return. They’re about returning to myself.

Avoidance shows up in other ways too. Lately, it’s been showing up at work.

With AI, I can get things done so fast now. Tasks that used to take an hour take five minutes. And because of that, I’ve started… waiting. Procrastinating. I keep putting things off until the last minute, telling myself I can do it quickly later. But that just builds anxiety. The pressure piles up, and I start to feel like I’m failing, not because I’m incapable, but because I’m disengaged. The speed makes me feel lazy. Like I’m skipping the process. Like I’m avoiding the part of myself that wants to learn, to think, to create with care.

This avoidant strategy tells me I’m doing “enough,” but underneath that is a deeper truth: I miss the satisfaction of being fully present with a task. I miss my own mind when I bypass it too much. Even though AI is a brilliant tool, it can become a way to check out rather than check in. And I want to come back to the part of me that loves slow, thoughtful work, not just the fast output.

And then there’s the escape that used to be my favorite: travel.

For years, I used road trips and Airbnbs as ways to shift my emotional landscape. I’d go to new places to shake off the weight I didn’t want to feel at home. The change of scenery, the novelty, the excitement, it gave me something else to focus on. But it was still avoidance. I wasn’t giving myself the chance to be with what was real, what was uncomfortable, what needed tending.

This summer, for the first time in a long time, I’m not planning a big escape. I’m choosing to stay home.

To root. To explore Washington. To bike, to backpack, to be outside, yes, but also to be here. To let my home become a place of healing, not a place to run from. There’s something sacred in this choice to stay still. To listen. To not fill every weekend with movement, but to allow stillness to reveal what needs to be seen.

Avoidance has many faces. Some are obvious. Others wear masks of connection, efficiency, freedom. But all of them, I’m realizing, are trying to protect me. To protect me from pain, from conflict, from overwhelm, from old stories that taught me love had to be earned by self-abandonment.

But I’m rewriting that story now.

I’m learning that staying, staying with myself, with my limits, with my discomfort, isn’t weakness. It’s intimacy. It’s integrity. It’s a homecoming.

And maybe this is what healing actually looks like: learning when to go, and when to stay. And having the courage to stay even when it’s hard.

Washington, 2021.