Why I Disappear When I Need You Most
A fearful avoidant’s story of silence, survival, and self-rescue.
Yesterday I posted a note that said, “When I go silent, I need someone to slap the words out of me… or spank. We could make it fun.🫣”
To the outside world, that note might’ve seemed like it came out of nowhere. Out of pocket. But to me, it was the most honest thing I could say.
So I’ll make it clear for you too.
I was not an unloved child. I know my mom cherishes my existence. But she never understood my emotional state of being.
Even from birth.
She had me in the middle of a snowstorm, in Aspen, Colorado, 1980. 24+ hours of back labor. No meds. She was convinced to try a home birth, but after a full day of immense pain, the midwife decided to get her to the hospital. [May I remind you - IN A SNOWSTORM! How many people can say that?!] This is when they would have done a C-section nowadays. But she suffered through it, and I was born at 2:34 am. She was tapped out, body in shock, nervous system burnt out. I was placed in the nursery.
I was born into this world a menace to my mother, nearly killing her in pain, and was handed to the wolves.
Do I remember this? No. Of course not. But I know the story. And I remember how she said she didn’t feel the instinct to hold me. To comfort me. To nurture. It just wasn’t there.
The light here is that at least I have been given validation for my feelings.
Bringing me home did not change that for her. I would cry, for whatever reason, and she would feel beyond frustrated. She would call the doctor to find out what to do with me. Cradling me just wasn’t her instinct.
She knows it was postpartum depression, the worst case her friend, the midwife, had ever seen. But it was also… just her.
After 45 years with her, I believe she has undiagnosed autistic traits. I’m not mad at her. I understand her. Now.
But for a brand-new human, an emotional, sensitive Pisces, those early lessons were brutal. I have memories of being in a crib, desperate, crying for something I couldn’t name. And no one came.
Eventually, I found my thumb. And that brought a type of comfort I held on to for far too long. [Read more on that here.]
I remember the frustration on my mother’s face. The exhaustion. I don’t know the details, but I know my dad wasn’t around. He’d left… consumed by drugs, alcohol, and women. And she was left to pick up the pieces.
I remember being left with babysitters while she worked. The ache of wanting to be with her. The night she let her friend watch me, but the friend brought me to her job, and I had a meltdown. I remember my mom’s face. The way she pulled herself out of my grip. Her frustration. Her friend’s impatience with me.
I get it now. As a mom myself, I understand adult emotions. But back then? Those moments shaped my entire being.
When I was 4, we lived in a two-story condo in downtown Aspen. My room was on the bottom floor. I begged my mom to sleep with me every night. One night, she actually laid down with me. It was the highlight of my four-year-old life. I remember the deep breath that I took. I remember the feeling of absolute peace. I remember her sneaking out. I remember the nightlight left on in the kitchen. I remember every detail.
It was in that same condo that I have my first memory of my father. I was in bed and heard a noise upstairs. I climbed the stairs one by one and saw a light under the bathroom door. I peered under the door and saw a man’s feet — not my mom’s. My memory cuts off, but I remember those feet.
She told me decades later it was him. He tried to come back. My next memory of him isn’t until my 7th birthday.
At 5, we moved to Rhode Island to be near her family. Her mother, her stepdad, her brother, and her sisters. The East Coast crew. Cold, direct. My grandmother was like my mother, but harder. I tried to be her favorite. I think I was, for a little while at least. I was the good little girl. Quiet. Manageable.
By the end of that year, we had moved out to an apartment 25 minutes away. My second new school. (Technically, my third. I went to the best preschool in Aspen, Wildwood. If you ever get a chance to drive up there and visit it in person, you’ll see where my fairy tendencies come from.)
I was in constant motion. I had babysitters before and after school. Sweet families. They’d bring me in and feed me their favorites. I got to have a sister or big brother every afternoon. But the longing for my mother was palpable. I’d pray for her safe return the second she got in the car to leave for work, promising God that I would be a good girl. I’d press my face to the window until I couldn’t see her anymore.
It was a ritual. I had to stay at least 60 seconds after she disappeared. I truly believed that was the only way to keep her safe. If a siren passed during the day, I would panic silently.
“Is today going to be the day she doesn’t come back.”
My body flooded with terror.
This was daily for years.
She says I was a happy child. And I was… when she returned. I was thrilled. Relieved. But she didn’t know about the hours of worry that preceded that moment. She still doesn’t understand when I say I felt sad and alone a lot.
“Mom. I showed you that I was happy to see you. Because I was. But you weren’t there for the hours of me being tortured in my head that you may not return, and that I would be left alone in this world. I had no understanding of what was going on. And then you would get me, you were stressed, you were depressed, you were going through adult things, while I was just desperate for you.”
When we were home together, she never played with me. Never sat on the floor and entered my world. I had Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids to keep me company. I created elaborate storylines, built entire lives for them. They were my only friends. My comfort.
At one point, I even made up an imaginary friend. Her name was Kelly. Not because I needed one, but because my mom was thrilled I had someone to talk to who wasn’t her. It made her feel like I was doing okay.
Even when I told her last year that I made Kelly up just to make her happy, she didn’t believe me.
“No, Audra. She was real to you. You talked to her all the time!”
Listen lady. I remember bull-shitting you the entire time, and I hated myself for it — maybe even you, for not seeing through it.
I got really good at telling my mom what she wanted to hear.
There are two other lies I told as a child that I carried with me until just a few years ago:
The first: I told a babysitter I still drank from a bottle. I was under three. My mom had just weaned me off, but I missed it. When she found out, the look on her face tore through me.
The second: We were in the women’s section of a department store, and she asked if I liked a certain dress. I didn’t. But I said I did. And immediately, I felt the stab of betrayal. Not to her. To myself.
Two little lies. But they sliced me open.
I didn’t feel I had the safety of becoming… me. With my own opinions. With my own answers. I was there purely to ensure my mother’s happiness.
Listen. I know I was extra sensitive. It’s in my DNA. I am comfortable with the path that I chose… now. Because I do believe I chose my mother. I chose the lessons that were needed to heal the energy that consumes me. I chose the battles.
But it’s my job to actually learn the lessons. And for the majority of my adult life I have been running from them. Hiding them. Paying attention to literally anything else besides the pain and my actual purpose.
Silencing all of the inner screams.
But isn’t that what I learned how to do from the beginning?
I learned to keep it all to myself. I learned how to comfort myself in whatever way needed. I learned that making others happy is the only way to relief. I learned that real to me was a lie I told and a secret I kept.
I will tell you what you want to hear. That is ingrained in me. I am a master.
They say it takes 12,000 hours to become an expert at something.
Shall we do the math?
There are 24 hours in a day times 365 days. That’s 8,760 hours per year. I am 45 years old. 394,200 hours.
For me to take that mask off — for me to willingly take it off, is a challenge hailed down by Zeus.
And that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do for the past five years.
That’s why I isolated.
That’s why I couldn’t carry anyone else’s… burdens, traumas, likes, dislikes… anything - anymore.
I have been fighting for MY life.
And if someone didn’t understand that, I pushed them away.
Because I am never not guarded. I am never not thinking about what you want me to say. To keep the peace.
That’s exactly what I am unlearning.
On good days, I’m deliberate. I am slow to respond. I pause. I process. And then, only then, will I speak my truth with kindness, clarity, and calm.
On bad days, I shrink. I agree. I shrug my shoulders. I go silent. I go back to a place where my thoughts are better left alone. Where my thoughts are comfort. Where my thoughts throw blows. Where my thoughts become my heaven AND my hell.
That’s what I meant in that note.
When I go silent, not the introspective kind of quiet — I’m talking the kind of silence that doesn’t throw around subtle jokes to make you smile, the kind that no longer volunteers information, the kind that no longer tries to help you understand, the kind that doesn’t look you in the eye…
When I go to that place, my self-built place of protection, that is when sometimes I wish someone would pull me out — save me from my hell.
Of course, not violently. Not out of malice. Not out of irritation or impatience. Out of pure love.
Someone who understands that silence is my scream.
Someone who can sit with my chaos without fear.
Someone who knows I need to speak it out loud to set it free.
I had to get to a point where I learned:
That someone has to be me.
I have to be the one to notice. To intervene. To hold my own hand and walk myself back. The one to grab me before I fall. The one to remind me that I am the creator of my own universe and I choose where I want to exist.
No more waiting for rescue.
And I am doing just that.
There are a lot of people who would be really happy for me right now.
Still, sometimes I slip.
Sometimes the silence returns — deafening, painful. The kind that wraps itself around me like a shroud. The kind that makes me want to disappear entirely.
And even though a part of me still wishes there was someone who could see it and pull me back out…
At least now, I know how to do it myself.
These days, I meet myself at the edge of the spiral. I ask what she needs. I ask what she's afraid of. I wrap her in the kind of love I used to beg others for.
And slowly, I walk her home.
This is not the absence of pain. This is the transformation of it.
Because silence is no longer where I want to go to vanish.
It’s where I go to listen.
The healing journey doesn’t always make sense. It often looks like isolation, grief, or breakdowns. But when we sit with the moments that shaped us — when we stop running, stop masking, stop silencing— it’s then that we can truly let them go. That’s when the weight starts to lift. That’s when we begin to live, unmasked and fully whole.
What a beautiful read! I find that becoming a mum brings up so many memories of our own childhood. As a side note, I’m the mum of a little baby Pisces and I know behind the extremely social and smiley baby there is a very sensitive being - even if people are surprised by this. Thank you for sharing your story!
Im reading you!!!