Burning Beneath

I went to play bingo today to pass some time with something that is redundant, something that does not require thinking. It’s routine, automatic gestures that repeat and repeat. It’s almost a numbing of the senses. Normally, midway through, I get really depressed and leave, sometimes without even finishing the game.

The thing is, I’ve learned not to force myself into situations I need to sit through. I don’t need to stay just because I started. If it doesn’t fit me, if it doesn’t feel right, if the energy feels wrong, I leave. I withdraw from the situation, from the surroundings, from the environment.

But today, I left for a completely different reason.

I was sitting almost at the back, and one of the workers, it was the first time I had seen her, was walking toward me at a fast pace. We made eye contact. She smiled. And I felt it instantly, like a punch in my gut.

Then it happened again. And again.

She kept walking around the area, doing her job, passing by me while I waited for the game to begin. And slowly, my mind shifted. I started questioning whether she was into me. Whether she was doing it on purpose. And without realizing it, my mind began to build a fantasy.

I became conscious of myself, of how I was sitting, what I was doing, waiting for her to pass again, waiting to be noticed. The entire space shifted, and suddenly, it wasn’t about bingo anymore. It was about her.

Old questions resurfaced.

Should I talk to her?

Should I tell her how I felt?

That directness used to be my go-to after my separation. I thought honesty meant saying everything immediately, not knowing any better. Thankfully, I didn’t act on it this time.

Instead, I paused.

And I asked myself: Why am I behaving like this?

What surprised me was realizing that this reaction had very little to do with her, and a lot to do with my past.

This wasn’t attraction in its pure form. It was activation.

It came from a place in me that learned, very early on, to equate attention with worth. To read meaning into moments of recognition. To search for signs of being chosen because being chosen once meant safety, validation, or relief from invisibility.

When connection has been inconsistent, when affection hasn’t been steady, the nervous system learns to latch onto small signals. A smile. A look. Proximity. Not because they mean something, but because the body remembers what it felt like to be unseen for too long.

My mind wasn’t lying to me.

It was protecting me.

It was trying to soothe a familiar longing: to feel wanted without risk, to feel seen without vulnerability, to feel desired without having to wait.

And that’s when I understood why the fantasy formed so quickly, not because there was something real to act on, but because my life right now has very few consistent points of human connection. When connection is scarce, the mind fills the gaps. It creates stories to make the emptiness more tolerable.

What changed today is that I noticed it.

I didn’t collapse into it.

I didn’t act on it.

I didn’t shame myself for it.

I stayed present long enough to see the pattern instead of becoming it.

And that, to me, is growth.

Not because I resisted something, but because I finally understood why it shows up, and realized I don’t have to obey every signal my nervous system sends just because it’s loud.

Sometimes, awareness is the real turning point.