So Farrr... Between the Last Post and the Upcoming Week

The satisfaction in self-destruction is what keeps me from getting out. Last night, right after I finished writing my previous post and went to bed, I saw two emails. I had been selected for two good volunteering positions. I lay there and ruminated myself to sleep. The next day at noon, I replied to both. To one, I said I was interested and willing to take the interview. To the other, I said I would submit the assignment required for the selection process. The first opportunity sent me two suggested interview times. I submitted the required assignment for the second one. I chose the assignment first. It was easier. Safer. Writing feels controllable. Interviews do not. I completed the assignment and submitted it. They replied, acknowledging it and asking when I would be free next week for a call. Then the first organisation emailed again. They had scheduled the later interview slot and sent me the meeting link. It was set for yesterday evening. Yesterday evening came. I opened the interview link. I checked my mic. I checked my camera. I adjusted the lighting. I rehearsed answers in my head. I opened the second email draft and checked their time zone again. I drafted a response suggesting a time. And then I did nothing. I did not join the interview. I did not send the time suggestion. I watched the opportunity sit there and pass. 

Now, as the weekend passes by, I have two things to do as a decent human being: respond to the first organisation with an apology and suggest a time for a call with the second one during the upcoming weekend. But. But the longer I wait, the heavier the emails become. What could have been a simple, human apology now feels like a formal confession. What could have been a quick scheduling reply now feels like I am asking for mercy. Because time turns small tasks into moral failures while silence compounds interest. I tell myself it is already too late. That they have moved on. That responding now would only expose my unreliability. And yet, I know that a two-line email could still exist. A polite apology and a suggested time. Nothing dramatic. Instead, I sit with the discomfort. I open the inbox. I close it. I draft. I delete. I calculate time zones again, as if precision will compensate for the delay. It would take five minutes. It has taken three days.

The absurdity of it is not lost on me. I am not incapable. I am not unaware. I am simply… resistant to the moment of exposure. The moment of admitting: I didn’t show up. And somewhere inside that resistance is the same quiet impulse: the one that would rather lose an opportunity than risk being seen trying. The weekend is still not over. Technically, neither opportunity is either. Well, probably the first opportunity, the greater one, the one that scared me more precisely because it mattered more, is gone. The task starts on Monday. The meeting link expired quietly with no dramatic ending, but just silence. And I tell myself this is a consequence. Natural, predictable consequence. There is a strange clarity that comes after something closes. While it was open, it demanded courage. Now that it is likely gone, it only demands reflection. Reflection is easier. It costs nothing. Really? I wonder if this is the pattern: desire rising to meet fear, and fear winning not by force, but by delay. I imagine what the interview would have been like. Perhaps awkward. Perhaps fine. Perhaps even good. I will never know, and that is the cleanest escape of all... uncertainty protects me from both failure and success. Because success would have required something too: confidence, consistency, visibility, and effort sustained over weeks. Not just one brave evening, but many ordinary ones after it. Losing it before it begins feels sharp, but contained and manageable. A small private disappointment instead of a public unfolding. Still, the second opportunity waits. It has not withdrawn. It has simply asked a question: When are you free? Such an ordinary question. Such an unreasonable weight. The weekend is thinning. The email draft still sits there. And I am left deciding whether I want to preserve the comfort of avoidance or tolerate the discomfort of being seen. It is almost funny how small the action is, and how large it feels. 

I don’t want the week to arrive and confront me with the possibility of never getting out of all the things I am in precisely because of this pattern. Because that would mean admitting it isn’t a circumstance. It isn’t bad luck. It isn’t timing. It is repetition. It is me. Not in a cruel way. Not in a condemning way. Or maybe, it is...? But in the quiet, consistent way, habits shape outcomes while pretending to be temporary. I tell myself I am tired. I tell myself I need more confidence, more preparation, more certainty. I tell myself I will act when I feel ready. But readiness is a horizon. It recedes as I approach it. And what frightens me most is not that I missed an interview. Well, that does too. But, it is also the possibility that I am building a life made of almosts. Almost replied. Almost joined. Almost tried. There is a version of this week where I send the apology, suggest the time, attend the call, stumble through it, and survive. There is another version where I let the silence stretch until it hardens into fact. Both versions begin with the same small act: pressing send. Truth is, the week will arrive regardless. It does not negotiate with my hesitation. It will present itself with its ordinary hours and ask nothing more dramatic than participation. Perhaps the real confrontation is not the week. It is the decision to interrupt the pattern, once, before it convinces me that it is who I am. Because patterns feel permanent until they are interrupted once. And maybe getting out is not a grand escape, a dramatic leap. Maybe it is a five-line email, tolerating the five seconds of exposure between drafting and sending. Maybe the only way out of the pattern is to interrupt it before it finishes the sentence for me. That first interruption is always embarrassingly small and disproportionately terrifying.

Perhaps this is what I meant when I wrote that the satisfaction in self-destruction is what keeps me from getting out. It is the dramatic ruin in the quiet erosion. It is the relief of not having to be evaluated. The comfort of choosing the loss before someone else can hand it to me. The illusion of control in deciding not to show up. There is a strange steadiness in saying, I ended it. Even if what I ended was a possibility. Because trying introduces variables. Other people. Unpredictable outcomes. Success that demands continuity. Failure that demands resilience. Both require exposure. Avoidance requires only silence. And silence is efficient. It protects me from embarrassment. It protects me from rejection. It even protects me from the burden of being capable. But it also keeps everything exactly where it is. So when I say I don’t want the week to arrive and confront me, what I mean is that I don’t want to see the cumulative effect of these small surrenders. I don’t want to stand in front of my own pattern and recognise its architecture. The satisfaction in self-destruction is subtle. It does not feel like violence. It feels like relief. Like postponement. Like choosing the known discomfort over the unknown possibility. And yet, the week will arrive. The inbox will remain. The second opportunity will either close quietly or widen slightly, depending on whether I press send. 

The week is coming either way. The question is whether I will.

I wish I believed in a superpower, like God, or something vast and intervening, so I could console and delude myself by praying for the week never to come. So I could hand over responsibility to something celestial and say: pause it. Delay it. Undo it. Give me one more weekend of suspension. There is comfort in imagining an authority that negotiates with time. That forgives without consequence. That rearranges outcomes in response to whispered bargains. But the week does not answer to prayer. It answers to the rotation of the earth. And perhaps what I am really wishing for is not divine intervention, but relief from agency. Relief from being the one who must choose. Relief from being the one who must press send. If there were a god of small mercies, I would ask not for the week to disappear, but for the courage to meet it without hiding. Since there isn’t... or since I don’t believe there is, the responsibility returns to me.

The week will come. The emails will wait. And the smallest act of faith available to me is not prayer, but participation.

~ Oizys.