Put Your Own Oxygen Mask On First

There’s a kind of absurdity to how well I function in the big things and how clumsy I am with the small ones. I can run a company, make decisions under pressure, lead people through uncertainty. But I still double-book myself for dinner or leave the laundry in the machine for three days. I show up. I deliver. I also do a thousand quiet corrections a day no one else sees. And the hardest place this shows up is in relationships.

I don’t always trust myself to want the right things. I confuse attention for affection, intensity for intimacy. So I’ve made myself stay single. Not as punishment. As protection. I’m not in hiding. I’m in recovery. I’m learning to be alone without needing to be wanted. I’m resetting what love feels like. Not the high, but the steady. Not the drama, but the presence. And I’ll wait. Because this time, I want to recognise it when it’s real.

There’s something quietly defiant about saying no to being chosen just because someone’s willing. About stepping back, not out of bitterness, but out of caution. I know what I’ve attracted in the past. People drawn to the light, the warmth, the impression of ease. And then confused, even affronted, when I show them the structure holding it all together. It’s easy to love someone in the glow of their competence. It’s harder to stay when that glow dims and you see the scaffolding underneath. But that’s the love I want. Not the rush of admiration. The gentleness of endurance.

Not long ago, I cried on the phone to someone I was getting to know. Not because he hurt me. Not because I was overwhelmed. I cried because I was disappointed. After all the work I’ve done on myself, all the things I’ve unlearned, I still almost let myself be love bombed again. I saw it happening. I recognised it. But part of me leaned in anyway, still wanting to believe it could be different this time.

He told me more than once, half-laughing, “I don’t want you to think I’m love bombing you.” And we both chuckled. Because it was too much, too soon. But I wanted to believe maybe this time, intensity could mean intention. My brain’s wired for hope. ADHD and autism both make me assume the best in people. I walk into things wide open. I take people at their word. I offer grace by default. And all I’ve ever really wanted is to be seen with that same softness in return.

He didn’t know what to do. He told me he didn’t know how to make me feel better. He wasn’t cruel. He just didn’t reach. He didn’t ask. He didn’t hold space. And I realised in that moment that we were standing at a crossroad. Not on the same path. Not even walking in the same direction.

I asked him if he was always like this or if it was just with me. I don’t think he understood what I meant. I was still hoping, quietly, that he’d hear what I was really asking. That if we were going to date, I’d need him to meet me emotionally. To offer comfort. To show up. He is autistic too. I think he was trying in his own way. But it wasn’t enough.

Still, I was fond of him. Even with all of that, I wanted to remember him as a person, not a disappointment. I asked him to tell me a joke. He tried. It wasn’t a good joke. Not especially funny. But he tried, and in that moment I needed him to be human again. I needed to end the call not in frustration, but in softness.

He told me he thought I was catastrophising. I don’t think he understood that I wasn’t grieving him. I was grieving the dysregulation I felt. The emotional crash of letting myself respond to a version of him that wasn’t real. I wanted him to say, “You don’t have to hold this alone.” I wasn’t asking for grand declarations, only comfort. What I got instead was distance. A quiet message that I was on my own.

I think he saw me as someone who had it all together. Someone self-contained. High-functioning. Fine. But that night, I didn’t want to keep performing strength. I didn’t want to manage the moment. I just wanted to be held and told that everything would be okay. That we’d figure it out. That he felt something towards me. That he was carrying his own demons. That he’d try if I tried. That we could hold each other’s hands and leap together. That there was mutual safety in two people who had both been through a lot, trying anyway, because they saw something in each other worth trying for.

I needed to be led. Just once. I needed not to be the one who always leads. I needed to feel safe enough to follow. I needed to trust that he’d take care of me.

When I got off the phone, I told myself I’d sleep on it. But I already knew. At some point, when I felt ready, I’d block him. Not out of malice. Just to make the silence clean. The nurturer in me, the girl who’s desperate to love and be loved, still wants him to be loved. But I’ve lived long enough to know I can’t be good for anyone if I don’t put my own oxygen mask on first. If I don’t hold my love for myself higher than my need to be chosen. So I’ll wish him well from afar, and I’ll keep walking.

Growing up, I was told directly what would make me lovable. I was told with words. With silence. With punishments. I was taught through physical and emotional abuse, through neglect that wore the face of discipline. I had to be perfect. Obedient. Polished. Smart but not defiant. Exceptional but never difficult. Love was something I had to earn. Something that could be taken away.

If I cried, I was told they were crocodile tears. Manipulative. Fake. If I didn’t cry, I was called heartless. Cold. I could never just be. I couldn’t exist as myself — not emotionally, not physically, not even in the quiet moments. I had to be all things, to all people, at all times. The responsible one. The smart one. The calm one. The one who could be leaned on. There was no space for contradiction. No space for mess. No space for me.

I became the token daughter. The one who looked good on paper. The one who made things easier. I kept my pain neat. Contained. I achieved. I smiled. I complied. And when I couldn’t do that anymore, I left. I walked away at sixteen with just the clothes on my back. Not because I wanted to prove a point. Because I knew, even then, that staying would destroy me. Their love was conditional. And I’d already paid too high a price.

I’ve been in relationships that looked like safety and ended in control. In manipulation. In gaslighting. In being broken down slowly over time. The moment I showed vulnerability — not the soft, pretty kind, but the real, frightened, imperfect kind — I was met with silence. Or resentment. Or punishment. So I learned not to show it. I kept the mess hidden. I smiled, served, sparkled. And they loved me for it — until they didn’t.

I once shared a phrase with someone I loved: “Love without asterisk.” He got me a box for letters and cards and wrote it inside the lid. At the time, it felt meaningful. But in the end, it was just a box. Because there was always an asterisk. His love came with terms too. So did my parents’. So did everyone else’s. I could be loved, but only if I performed. Only if I didn’t get it wrong. Only if I wasn’t too much.

When my niece died, everything collapsed. There are moments that split you, and that was mine. I unravelled. All the holding it together, all the managing and masking and performing — it fell apart. And underneath it was a grief I’d been dragging behind me my entire life. Her death forced me to stop. I couldn’t outrun my own pain anymore. I had no choice but to confront the things I’d buried. The things I’d adapted around. The things that were never my fault, but had always been my responsibility to survive.

That’s when I started to understand what it meant to put my own oxygen mask on. Not just as a metaphor, but as a necessity. I’d spent my whole life gasping for air while everyone around me watched. I didn’t even know I was suffocating — I thought it was just how life felt. Tight. Fragile. Conditional. No one had ever shown me I was allowed to breathe. No one had ever said, “You matter too.” I had to learn it on the floor of my own grief. I had to learn it by losing everything I was holding up and realising I still existed anyway.

It’s easy to forget that survival isn’t the same as living. That you can run a business, manage a home, show up for your friends, respond to every message, and still be running on empty. You can perform resilience so well that people forget to ask if you’re tired. Or lonely.

Putting your own oxygen mask on first isn’t a metaphor. It’s the choice to stay whole. It’s knowing when to let go. It’s deciding not to abandon yourself just because someone else might. It’s the refusal to bleed for a kind of closeness that leaves you emptied.

I still want love. I want to be seen, known, and held. But I won’t trade my peace for a seat at the wrong table. I won’t shrink myself just to be picked. I want a love that recognises effort. That notices the scaffolding. That doesn’t panic when the light flickers. Until then, I’ll keep my oxygen mask on. I’ll breathe. I’ll rest. I’ll carry on with the quiet, deliberate work of staying soft in a world that told me to harden.

Because I’m trusting that what’s meant for me will never need me to perform for it.