My Gut Said No. I Said Yes Anyway.

There’s a special kind of ick that comes after doing something you knew you didn’t want to do.

No one forced me. No one tricked me. I wasn’t drunk or cornered or twenty-three.

I just didn’t trust myself enough to say no.

And what’s worse? I saw it coming — that slow-motion moment where your gut’s like, “Hey, maybe don’t?” and your mouth is already like, “Sure, sounds great!”

Welcome to the adult version of peer pressure. It’s not loud or obvious anymore. It’s subtle. It shows up as:

Don’t be difficult.

Maybe I’m just being sensitive.

They’ll think I’m weird if I say no.

They don’t see the cost — so I pay it anyway.

And so you do the thing. You accommodate.

In my case?
I sent the voice note.
Something I didn’t want to send.
Something I literally said I don’t do.

But they asked.
And I didn’t want to seem inflexible or “too much.”
So I overrode the system. Hit record. Sent it.

And when the silence came after?

My brain went full DEFCON 1.
Scanning tone, timelines, subtext. Wondering if they’d liked any new posts since hearing my voice. Running searches my heart didn’t approve but my anxiety insisted on.

None of this was in the plan.

My brain runs on logic. Has to. It’s how I keep from getting swallowed by every what-if and every landmine disguised as casual conversation.

Most days, it works. Clean. Predictable. Reliable.

Until a rogue feeling shows up.
And the whole structure goes down like a Jenga tower made of red flags and good intentions.

That’s the thing about emotional variables: they don’t follow protocol. They sneak in unannounced, knock over the furniture, and leave your tidy logic scattered across the floor.

Logic says: You knew better.
Emotion says: But maybe this time would be different.
Logic says: They don’t owe you anything.
Emotion says: But I showed up. Doesn’t that count for something?

Welcome to the spiral.
Where every silence is a verdict and every verdict is suspect.

The kicker? We think boundaries magically cement themselves at 30. That wanting to be liked vanishes just because we pay our own bills. But it doesn’t. It just gets sneakier.

I’m not mad at myself for it. But I am paying attention.

Because if my body says no and my brain still whispers maybe, that’s not maturity — that’s muscle memory. That’s an old loop.

And maybe the fix isn’t to debug the glitch.
Maybe it’s to write the damn thing down.
To paint it. Build something from it.
To turn the spiral into output.

Turn the glitch into a feature.