🖋 you can just leave〈Valerie〉

Title: you can just leave

Author: Valerie

URL: https://clubreticent.substack.com/p/you-can-just-leave

Date: 2025-03-18

life lessons from an avoidant

I’ve stumbled upon this essay once again while I was uncluttering my TidGy setup. ¹ I was going to write some kind of response as I was going through my own loss + rejection trauma, but, for better or worse, after half a year has passed, I completely forgot what I was trying to say.

However, I still appreciate this post a lot & still have a problem which in Substack’s lingo usually sounds like “wish I could quote the entire essay”. Therefore I’ll leave three quote below – please don’t forget to read the whole thing if these resonate with you.

At the same time, I’m careful about preaching leaving as yet another individualist fetch. We’re already isolated beyond repair into submission, where “setting boundaries” and “prioritizing yourself” are just encoded absolution of guilt in turning your back away from those who need you, dividing us further into singular labor units in which we can get high and wet and horny on consumerism and excessive productivity, benefitting the top of the pyramid and leaving each other empty-handed and unstable. That’s not at all what I stand for, so let me reinstate: I don’t leave when I’m inconvenienced or when things are difficult. I leave when inconvenience turns to self-harm — once the scale tips and the cost of staying outweighs the pain of parting ways. To leave is to remove myself from places that are hurting me, using me, hindering me — I don’t think that’s an inherently capitalist idea in this capacity. In fact, I think it’s something young women should exercise more. Because, well, we’re mostly told to do the opposite.

I could’ve waited for things to get worse or better or remain the same, but now we’ll never know. I wasn’t curious enough to see what happens if I just push a little harder or wait a little longer.

I also just don’t buy into the lie that hating our circumstances is a natural part of the human condition, something to endure. No promise is lucrative enough when you have to force yourself out of bed every morning.

My leaving policy comes from trauma and is extreme and ruthless, near toying with morality at times, decapitating certainty at a great cost. I wouldn’t want you to live by it — I may as well regret it all when I’m older. But since you’ll have a million people tell you to remain where you are, to sacrifice, to endure, to wait it out, that your doubt is sinful and your dissatisfaction narcissistic, maybe you could use some tough love from an avoidant.