shapes of avoidance

The blur between comfort and avoidance and what I call emotional wallpapering

Have you ever stopped to notice the endless sensory details that fill a day?
The hum of a fridge.
The weight of your hoodie hanging against your neck.
The way a room feels quieter when you turn the light off.

These tiny things, the background noise, soft fabrics, dim light—can feel grounding. Distracting, even. But they can also become part of something else entirely.

I’ve realized that sometimes, paying close attention to the outside world is a way to avoid listening to an inside one.

Some of us buffer emotional noise however we can. However we’ve learned.
Sometimes that means never sitting long enough to hear.

Avoidance is a pause, not a refusal. The act of noticing is the real challenge. It requires stillness. Demands presence. Be careful, I tell myself. We adjust to things so quickly, even discomfort can curl under normalcy’s wing.

Valdemar Kornerup, A Moment's Reflection (1923)

My mom used to leave the TV on, even when we weren’t home. I never questioned this. It was just... on. Talking to the windows opposite the wall, filling space.

I think it made coming back feel less empty. Like we hadn’t been gone at all. As if even the house needed comforting.

It was just the two of us after my stepdad passed. A big house that suddenly felt too large, like it could echo back more than it held.

I think we both did a lot of emotional wallpapering. TVs left on. Lights glowing in empty rooms. Candles burned for ambience rather than intention. Doors always open. Little things to keep the silence snuggly tucked in by life.

Now I do it too. I’ll turn the TV on and walk away. Not watching, but just letting the chatter coat the quiet like primer before paint. It feels better that way. Less sharp. Less likely to stir something I’ve been keeping just out of reach.

This noise is a way to say not now. It seems silence has become a mirror, and avoiding that reflection is its own kind of noise.

This became abundantly clear one evening, after a familiar little haze settled in.
The kind that slows everything down, turns thoughts syrupy, makes the edges of the day go just a bit soft around me.

I found myself on the couch with dinner. A variation of sweet potatoes, chicken, and a vegetable. Boring but delicious.

There was nothing remarkable about the moment, but something in me cracked open just enough to notice.

It felt like what I’ve come to define as dissociation: Slightly outside myself. Hyper-aware. Noticing the nuance in scenes I’ve already lived.

I retraced the steps I’d taken after getting home from work, turning on lights even though it wasn’t dark yet, lighting a candle, pressing play on a podcast I’d started in the car.

The motions were so familiar, so automatic. But in that moment, they pulsed with a quiet call to alarm.

I realized I do this every time I get home. The sound. The scent. The lamps.

Little rituals to make the place feel inhabited—maybe even alive—before I let myself fully arrive.

You might argue that even this—coming home and lighting up my space in this particular, practiced way, is performative. You might even say it’s the realest act of avoidance.

It begs the question: Have I ever truly been present? It’s been circling me lately like a gnat’s relentless attempt to land on the fruit I’m eating.

Underneath the coping mechanisms—the noise, the candles, the same dinner—
I’m starting to count the moments of true flow on only one hand. Moments where I wasn’t buffering, anticipating, distracting. Just being. And it scares me a little, how rare that feels.

It feels so strange to measure my life’s truly grounded moments by counting on my fingers Yet I’m growing frustrated with practiced presence. How long will it keep asking more of us than we’re ready to give? Why am I not ready yet, though?

I know there’s a reason I avoid being fully here. Some days I wonder if I am, in fact, grounded. And maybe it’s just not always that grand of a noticing to begin with.

It’s like I’ve been expecting the world to reward me with an unmissable sense of peace, just because I’ve spent so long hiding under it. To feel everything as it comes, when it comes. That requires trust.

Trust in the moment. Trust in ourselves. Trust that things won’t swallow us whole.

So we soften it. We delay it. We often coat it in podcasts and candles and motion.

So much so that eventually, we stop recognizing the difference. The lines of the Venn diagram encompassing living and existing slowly blur.

Stillness can feel like danger when you’ve spent your life keeping pace with fear.

I wonder how many of us grew up learning that survival meant not feeling too much at once. That some emotions had to be saved for later. Or stored in the body. Or sublimated into productivity. Or that anger was unseemly. That grief had an expiration date. That softness made you foolish.

Avoidance isn’t failure. It isn’t laziness. It’s protection. It’s the body saying not now because it wasn’t safe back then.

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All this being said, I’ve noticed the performance and yet, even inside it, there are moments that really do feel real.

Like a warm towel straight from the dryer.
That lemony dish soap smell after cleaning.
A heating pad on my back.
The smell of my lotion.
The first ten minutes of light in the morning.
A good laugh with a friend.
A really cold seltzer.
My rain boots.

I don’t think I have to eliminate the performance because to an extent, it’s just a part of life.

I do, however, feel that maybe it’s just about making an effort to notice when something real slips through.

What do you reach for when the silence feels too loud?
What rituals have you built to feel okay?
What does true presence look like for you, and how often do you find it?