the aesthetics of avoidance

somewhere between my third cup of coffee and my fourth hour of cleaning a kitchen that was already clean, i realized i wasn’t taking care of myself. i was performing the idea of someone who had it together. the diffused light, the scent of a fig candle burning softly in the background, the gentle piano playing from a playlist called “soft days”—everything about the moment looked like peace. and yet, something felt like distance. like i was watching myself participate in my own life from the outside. like the version of me going through the motions had been curated for a quiet, invisible audience. i wasn’t connecting—I was managing. and i was managing beautifully.

i think a lot of us have learned how to make our avoidance look lovely. how to decorate our emotional distance so well that even we start to believe it’s healing. we’ve mastered the aesthetic of calm. the optics of mindfulness. we say we’re choosing softness when, really, we’re choosing not to feel. we light candles and journal and drink ceremonial-grade matcha in stoneware mugs, not because we’re grounded, but because we’re scared of what might surface if we stop arranging things long enough to be still with ourselves. and the world claps for us. it calls this discipline. it calls this clarity. it reposts it on mood boards and shares it in reels. and slowly, without realizing it, we begin to mistake the form of presence for the feeling of it.

there’s a certain flavor of avoidance that isn’t messy or chaotic or loud. it’s quiet. tidy. composed. it’s the type of avoidance that goes undetected because it lives in routines that look respectable. it’s emotionally intelligent enough to recognize its own patterns, but not brave enough to sit with them. it doesn’t run away—it rearranges. and instead of confronting the discomfort head-on, it creates an atmosphere where that discomfort is gently muted. turned down like background noise. not silenced, but softened until it can be lived with comfortably, indefinitely. it looks like control. it sounds like productivity. it feels like safety. but in reality, it’s a kind of emotional stalling.

i’ve done this more times than i can count. i’ve filled my days with so much care and curation that there was no room left for confrontation. i’ve spent hours writing soft reflections about moving through life gently, while simultaneously avoiding one text, one truth, one hard conversation. i’ve used quiet as a coping mechanism. i’ve labeled self-protection as self-care. i’ve wrapped my overthinking in beautiful routines and called it introspection. but avoidance, no matter how softly it speaks, still carries weight. and when you carry enough of it, it starts to shape your emotional posture—how you speak, how you sit in rooms, how you interpret silence, how long you can tolerate being alone with your own truth.

there’s a reason we do this. sometimes we’ve grown up in emotional climates where confrontation was dangerous or useless or unrewarded. so we turned inward. we learned to regulate by decorating. by making the environment beautiful so we wouldn’t have to deal with the mess inside. we learned to create harmony where there was none. and over time, the rituals we created to soothe ourselves became our shield. the tidy kitchen, the quiet playlist, the long solo walks—these became our coping mechanisms. and in many ways, they kept us safe. but safety, when prolonged too long without inspection, turns into smallness. and emotional smallness, when disguised as minimalism or control, can pass for wisdom.

the problem isn’t the rituals themselves. i love them. i love that we’re learning how to create beauty around us. i love that we’re unlearning chaos. i love that we’re finally building environments that hold us instead of triggering us. but i also think we need to ask: am i really healing here, or am i just hiding? am i connecting, or am i performing the version of healing that gets the most validation? because healing doesn’t always look like stillness. sometimes it looks like breaking character. sometimes it looks like confrontation. sometimes it looks like crying over something you thought you already moved through. sometimes it looks like saying the hard thing instead of writing the beautiful paragraph.

i don’t want a life that only looks soft. i want a life that allows me to show up with my full range. i want a life where i don’t have to be composed to be worthy. where i can unravel and still be seen as whole. where i can admit that sometimes i make everything around me beautiful so i don’t have to feel how unlovely certain parts of me still feel on the inside. i want to be the kind of person who knows when softness is a balm and when it’s a bypass. who knows when silence is peace and when it’s just fear in a prettier outfit.

and so lately, i’ve been asking myself harder questions. what am i decorating instead of addressing? what am i styling instead of saying out loud? what part of me still feels the need to earn rest by making it look productive? what would happen if i didn’t organize the emotion before i felt it? what if the room was a mess and so was i, and that was still allowed to be a real day?

we talk a lot about intentional living. about beauty and slowness and quiet joy. and i still believe in all of it. but intention only works when it includes honesty. when it doesn’t just ask, “does this look like a life i love?” but also, “am i fully living it, or just framing it for display?”

the aesthetics of avoidance are seductive. they are safe and clean and deeply praised. but the truth is: a beautiful room doesn’t mean you’re present in it. a soft life doesn’t mean you’re fully in it. and sometimes, the most honest thing we can do is let the candle burn out, say the hard thing, and meet ourselves in the mess we’ve tried to decorate away.

because real healing isn’t always lit beautifully. sometimes it’s fluorescent and awkward and unfiltered. but it’s real. and real, even when it’s ugly, is always more freeing than aesthetic avoidance could ever be.