Two people drowning in the same thing

This is part 2 of some earlier thoughts on commitment. They’re comprehensive separately, although some things might make more sense if you read the other one. I’m also continuing to spoil Mickey 17.

Miriam used to get frustrated with me. She would compliment me and my work with the voice of an annoyed mom-friend who was tired of validating me but also cared enough to continue doing it. My feelings towards Miriam were just as perplexing. She had this incredible ambition and unwavering commitment that I admired. She seemed to need no one, and I often didn’t know how to help her even though I wanted to. Her words often had a stinging quality, like gentle taps on my face delivered with a soft glove covered in tiny thorns. They didn’t lack love per se; it’s more that they were layered with a lack of it. Despite all this, we were also inevitably close. Too close.

She got drunk once and told me that she hated me. For how easily I flowed and how easy it was for me to produce something pretty, and potentially many more things left unsaid. I appreciated her honesty, and I may have felt hurt. Maybe I hated her too, but back then, I wasn’t so good at reading my own feelings. They’d just get swallowed—by what, I’m not sure. Miriam didn’t remember anything the next day, and I didn’t feel the need to remind her of the intoxicated honesty.

Miriam and I lost touch. Miriam was also not her name. She was a mirror for a version of me that I couldn’t get in touch with, and vice versa.

I understand Miriam now. She was frustrated because I wasn’t living up to my potential, and what angered her more was that I wasn’t even trying. Yet, I always felt like the victim and was upset about things not going my way. When someone is not going after what they really want, often there’s an issue of self-worth in the background.

But Miriam—she was always working hard and tirelessly. A go-getter who put in the effort but somehow still wasn’t getting what she wanted. My read was that she was making things unnecessarily difficult for herself, preferring to do everything alone, not asking for help, and chasing opportunities that weren’t choosing her. When someone is working hard to the point where it seems they’re working against themselves, there’s also often an issue of self-worth in the background.

At some point, we both internalized that we weren’t good enough and this lack expressed itself through unhelpful behavioural patterns in familiar situations with no forward movement. I withdrew and didn’t try; she chased and overworked.

Both strategies were unconsciously designed to avoid the vulnerability of what Cate Hall calls “Actually Trying.” Actually trying would have required both of us to face the fact that we’re the makers of our suffering, in a way. Actually trying threatens your entire worldview because it requires you to dismantle your view of yourself.

Cate has been publishing more on Substack, and I’ve been loving it. In one of her latest essays, she mentions this concept called “faulty sensory appreciation”—the idea that “habitual tension distorts your sensory impressions.” Essentially, it means that we get so used to struggling that struggle starts to feel like the correct way to live. So, when ease or genuine care shows up, it feels suspicious or undeserved. As Cate writes, “the feeling of effort doesn’t mean that you’re Actually Trying.” Sometimes we use struggle as proof that we’re trying, when it might actually signal that we’re working against ourselves.

Allow me to illustrate with Mickey 17 again. During one of his missions, Mickey falls into a deep crack—the entire movie opens with him covered in snow—and he’s found by the aliens of the ice planet. A dozen alien children shuffle him away at the command of mother alien. Mickey was convinced that he was about to become their dinner. But no—they drag him to an exit and spit him out onto the surface.

They saved him.

Yet, instead of being grateful, Mickey is angry and hurt. “I’m still good meat,” he cries as he watches the aliens shuffle back into their cave. This is my favorite line. It’s Mickey 17’s lowest moment but also a moment where we finally see something real. In this one simple line, we get a glimpse of Mickey’s true feelings—as true as they can be to a clone whose identity has become totally enmeshed with his commitment to being disposable. He’s literally trying to convince his saviors that he’s worthy of being treated like garbage. Is his low sense of self-worth a result of the commitment he made, or did his lack of self-worth land him in this commitment that continues reinforcing his negative self-belief? Which came first?

Until you feel worthy of what you really desire, you’ll be stuck with commitments that choose you in one way or another. If you’re more passive, like me in the Miriam story, you default to things and people that choose you because it soothes that unworthy part—“I was chosen, therefore I must be valuable.” On the other end of the spectrum, you go after things and people that are hard to reach for the same soothing reason—“Once I am chosen, I will be valuable.” Notice that in both cases, the internal monologue isn’t about choosing, it’s about being chosen. You’re operating from a place of “this is what I deserve” instead of “this is what I desire.”

So the real question we need to ask ourselves is: are we navigating commitments based on what we think we deserve or what we truly desire?

Nothing delivers a bigger crack in your self-perception than the unearned love of another. I say “unearned” because for those of us who learned that we must work for love, that’s what “unconditional” translates to. What feels safer about familiar dynamics is that we don’t need to change at all. We just need to be ourselves the way we’ve been taught and have always known, and this feels safe. Everyone wants to be accepted for who they are, but we forget that “who we are” is often not “who we are deep down” beyond all the conditioning. What’s scary about genuine connection and love is that it requires us to come face to face with the constructed and suppressed parts of ourselves. When you’re presented with the reality that 60-80% of your self are masks upon masks, do you run, or do you try to get to the 20-40%?

Familiar dynamics are like a weighted blanket that can’t be adjusted and you take for granted—it feels “safe” because we know that it will remain unchanged, but it’s also gradually weighing us down. One day, you might wake up to the feeling of heaviness, of feeling stuck underneath this blanket. Genuine love and connection are like an adjustable weighted blanket you want to cherish—it’s safety that grows and changes with us. It might feel unsafe at first, maybe even unsettling because of its flexible nature but at some point, you’ll see that this kind of expansive safety is the kind that stays without the heavy stuckness.

They say how we commit to one thing is how we commit to anything. Love is where we first learn about commitment. Through our earliest relationships with our caretakers, we internalize what it means to be chosen, valued, and whether we’re worthy of staying. We mirror our early experiences later on in life for better or worse. For those of us who didn’t receive the kind of love we needed, this means being drawn to people and situations that reinforce our negative early experiences.

The only way out is to generate worthiness and love from within, and the specifics of how to do this will vary from person to person. What I think is more universal is how your internal landscape of thoughts and feelings shifts. First comes self-acceptance. Accepting yourself, all of yourself, especially the parts you dislike or think aren’t good enough—the parts that felt rejected. Then you stop searching for safety and home outside yourself because you learn that you are your home and protector. At least, this is what self-love means to me.

We’ll attract familiar dynamics and situations over and over again until we see the lesson that we need to learn. And when we finally see it, the kindest thing you can do for yourself and each other is to stop playing your part in the pattern. Sometimes this means letting go of the other person, the situation, the career, the city, and with them the version of yourself you thought you needed to be.

Miriam and I were two people who couldn’t help each other because we were drowning in the same thing, and losing touch was the most mutually helpful outcome of our meeting.