A Liminal Space

A Note on Process:

This piece emerged from a long conversation—with myself, really, though AI served as a reflective partner in the process. I started with raw, stream-of-consciousness writing trying to understand my own patterns around connection and consumption. The AI helped me see the structure in what I was already saying, asked questions that pushed me deeper, and helped organize the scattered insights into something coherent.

All the experiences, memories, and core insights are mine. The observations about extraction vs. nourishment, being needed vs. belonging, caring vs. carrying—come from years of living and reflecting on my own relationships. What AI provided was a mirror: reflecting back what I was saying so I could see it more clearly, asking “what do you mean by that?” when I was vague, and helping me organize thoughts that were sprawling across pages.

I’m sharing this because transparency matters to me. I don’t want to take credit for something I didn’t do, but I also don’t want to pretend I didn’t use tools that genuinely helped me think more clearly. Writing has always been how I figure out what I already know. Sometimes that process needs a reflective surface—another person, a journal, or in this case, AI.

The raw writing you’ll see throughout this piece? That’s entirely mine, unedited, searching. The polished sections in between? Those are collaborative—my ideas, organized and clarified with AI’s help.

I think this is worth naming because many of us are navigating how to use these tools with integrity. For me, AI works best as an editor and assistant, not a replacement for thinking. It can’t tell me what I’ve experienced or what it means. But it can help me see the patterns I’m already sensing more clearly.

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In Part 1 Love vs. Consumption, I explored how love gives while consumption takes—how genuine love creates space for others to become themselves, while consumption uses people to fill our own voids.

Today I want to go deeper into what this looks like in our actual relationships. Because understanding the difference intellectually is one thing. Recognizing it in real time—especially in relationships that feel meaningful—is much harder.

I’ve been asking myself: What creates genuine connection? What makes us click with another person? And why do we sometimes back away from the very intimacy we claim to want?

These questions have followed me my entire life, but I’m only now beginning to understand the answers.

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I wrote this in a moment of trying to understand my own patterns. I’m sharing it unedited because sometimes the searching itself is the point…

I was thinking about connection this morning. What is it that creates a connection? What is it that causes us to click with someone else? I think it’s one of the questions I’ve probably been asking myself my entire life.

My earliest memory of feeling a connection was to Henry, my aunt’s uncle. I usually found him sitting outside on a Coke crate, drunk, in front of my aunt and uncle’s store. I got the sense, even at my young age, that Henry had suffered a lot in his life. There was a realness about him even when his speech was slurred. He laughed at my childlike observations. I could just talk and talk and he didn’t seem to mind. Come to think of it, he might have even enjoyed it.

The other kids my age, even my cousins, I didn’t feel a connection with. Maybe it was because I knew I was adopted.  Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to pretend to be like them—act like them, dress like them. I always wanted to be me. Uniquely me.
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The Pattern of Disappearing

My earliest memory of genuine connection: the other person saw me without needing me to perform. There was a realness in this encounter, an absence of pretense. I didn’t have to act a certain way, dress a certain way, or become someone else to earn belonging.

But most relationships didn’t feel like that. Most felt like they required me—to become who others needed me to be.

For years, I thought this was just how connection worked. You give yourself away. You become useful. You fill the void in someone else, and in return, they make you feel valuable. It felt like nourishment at the time. I didn’t even know the real me was disappearing.

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My parents looked at me and saw what they wanted me to be: the beautiful little girl who would give them what they needed, fill the void, somehow become big enough to meet their need for wholeness. But I couldn’t. The beauty pageant they said I was supposed to win—honorable mention. I hadn’t been as pretty as her. I fell short. And that’s how I’d always feel, like I’d fallen short. But I’d try growing up to be pretty, and I felt better about myself when I could feel like I was. But then when I gained weight from eating all the Dolly Madison cakes that we bought ten for a dollar at the bakery store, I felt despicable.

Extraction Disguised as Connection

Extractive relationships are insidious because they feel meaningful at first. Someone makes you feel seen, valuable, important—but only when it serves them. You’re not in a mutual exchange. You’re functioning as a resource, a battery to power someone else’s sense of purpose or wholeness.

The proof comes when you stop serving their needs. When you question, when you need something different, when your light wants to shine in a direction that doesn’t illuminate them—suddenly you’re not valuable anymore.

Extractive relationships take your life force—your energy, attention, sense of self—to fill someone else’s emptiness. You become a resource to be consumed, not a person to be known.

The cruelest form of extraction? It makes you feel valuable in the process. Someone reflects your light back to you, but only when it serves them. Every time you give them your attention, your insight, your presence—they feel filled. But you’re not being nourished. You’re being drained.

I learned this pattern early and repeated it in systems that needed my compliance, with people who needed my usefulness, with organizations that needed my devotion. Each time, I gave myself away believing this was how you earned belonging.

Each time, I came away more exhausted, more lost, more convinced something was wrong with me.

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I realize as I write this that the things we will do to feel a connection sometimes can be incredibly destructive. That’s what comes to mind. When a genuine connection is missing, we will do anything to find it. My adopted father harmed me in order to find it.

I still remember when I understood him for the first time, desperately seeking my own missing connection. I saw my adopted father in my own eyes—the same desperation.

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The Difference Between Being Needed and Belonging

Here’s what I’m finally understanding: I don’t want to be needed. I want to belong.

Being needed makes you instrumental—useful, but not seen. You have value only as long as you’re filling someone else’s void. The moment you stop being useful, you’re disposable.

Belonging means you can be yourself and that’s enough. You don’t have to earn it through usefulness or by becoming what someone else requires.

Think about the relationships where you’ve felt genuine belonging. What did they have in common?

In my experience, the people and places where I genuinely experienced belonging didn’t need me to be anything other than what I already was. They gave me space to exist without performance, without pretense, without becoming smaller or larger than myself.

I’m not saying these relationships were perfect or that every interaction felt nourishing. No relationship can be everything we need. Even in the healthiest connections, there are moments of disconnection, misunderstanding, or disappointment. People have bad days. We miscommunicate. We hurt each other unintentionally.

But the difference is this: In genuine belonging, those difficult moments don’t erase your inherent worth. You’re not suddenly disposable when you’re struggling, questioning, or unable to give. The relationship has enough foundation to hold tension, repair ruptures, and return to connection.

There was no script to follow. No role to play. No emotional management required as a condition of belonging. Just presence. Just realness. And when realness got messy—as it inevitably does—the relationship could hold that too.

That’s the kind of connection worth seeking. That’s the kind of connection worth protecting.

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How Extraction Actually Works

It’s important to understand the mechanics because extraction is so often invisible until you’re already depleted.

The pattern typically looks like this:

1. Initial recognition: Someone seems to see you deeply. They reflect something back that feels true and valuable. This creates intense connection—finally, someone who understands.

2. Increasing investment: You give more of yourself—time, energy, emotional labor, insight, creativity. It feels meaningful. You feel needed, which you’ve learned to interpret as being valued.

3. Subtle shift: Slowly, the relationship becomes about maintaining their sense of wholeness. Your needs become secondary. Your growth happens only in directions that serve them.

4. The test: When you question, need something different, or try to establish boundaries, the connection falters. Suddenly you’re difficult, ungrateful, or misunderstanding the situation.

5. The revelation: You realize the “connection” was conditional all along. You were valued for your function, not your personhood.

The exhaustion you feel afterward isn’t just tiredness. It’s your system recovering from years of giving itself away.

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I’ll never forget when he looked at me and said he loved me. He was crying. Why? Was it because he was a monster? I don’t know. I think it was because he saw in me something he wished he had for himself. What was that? Connection to something bigger than myself? I’d always been looking for it. I thought he had it. I mean, he was the one who had the words that gave people hope. Maybe he wanted the same thing I did. But I can’t speak for him, only for myself. I wanted to be free to be myself. I wanted to know I was good, I was free, that there was more to this life than what I’d experienced—the damn emptiness, meaninglessness of existence, the pretending, the temporary satisfaction that came from the things I consumed.

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Consumption in Order to Find Belonging

There’s a connection between extractive relationships and our consumer culture. Both promise to fill the hole inside us. Both leave us hungrier than we were before.

When we don’t get what we need—genuine belonging, authentic connection, the space to be ourselves—we start looking for substitutes. Sometimes that’s material consumption. Sometimes it’s consuming another person’s validation, presence, or approval.

But love gives. Love doesn’t take what it knows would give only temporary satisfaction. Love honors what is true about another person and gives them space to become themselves.

Extraction, on the other hand, is always taking from someone else to fill your own void. It’s treating another person like a product to be consumed rather than a person to be known.

And here’s what’s insidious: many of us learned to participate in this dynamic. We learned that being consumed meant being valuable. We learned that our worth came from our usefulness to others.

Breaking this pattern means learning to distinguish between:
– Caring (being present with appropriate boundaries) and carrying(taking responsibility for someone else’s wholeness)
– Support (helping someone find their own solid ground) and rescue (becoming their ground)
– Connection (mutual presence that nourishes both people) and consumption (one person extracting life force from another)

Signs You’re in an Extractive Relationship

You might be in an extractive relationship if:

– You feel more drained than nourished after interactions
– You monitor their emotional state more closely than your own
– You feel responsible for their sense of wholeness or happiness
– Your needs consistently come second
– You feel guilty for having boundaries
– The relationship feels fragile—like one wrong move could shatter everything
– You’re celebrated when you’re useful, dismissed when you’re not
– You find yourself becoming smaller, quieter, less yourself
– You’re working harder to maintain the connection than they are
– The thought of disappointing them fills you with dread

You know you’ve found genuine connection when:

– You feel more yourself, not less
– Your growth is celebrated even when it doesn’t serve them
– Boundaries are respected, not resented
– There’s room for your needs alongside theirs
– The relationship can hold disagreement without collapse
– You’re valued for who you are, not what you provide
– You feel energized after time together (even if the conversation was difficult)
– There’s mutuality in the giving and receiving

The Work Ahead

Recognizing extraction is the first step. But awareness alone doesn’t break the pattern. We have to learn new ways of being in relationship—with others and with ourselves.

This means:
– Learning to notice when we start disappearing
– Getting curious about why we’re willing to give ourselves away
– Building solid ground in ourselves so we’re not desperately reaching for it in others
– Practicing boundaries even when they feel uncomfortable
– Trusting that genuine connection won’t require us to betray ourselves

It also means grieving. Grieving the relationships we thought were real. Grieving the time we spent trying to earn belonging through usefulness. Grieving the versions of ourselves we abandoned in order to fit.

This grief is part of the process. It’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign you’re finally feeling how much it cost you to live that way.

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For years I believed that I was the weird one, but I’m seeing now that coming into the world and feeling like I didn’t belong actually was an advantage for me. It gave me the ability to see past the message the world was giving me to conform to its image. My weirdness was always a gift. But it felt like a curse, like I was on the outside looking in, like I missed out.

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When you think about your closest relationships—past or present—can you identify which ones nourished you and which ones consumed you? What was the difference?

The answer might surprise you. And it might point you toward the kind of connection your soul has been seeking all along.

If you’re navigating recovery from extractive relationships, know that peer support exists—spaces where survivors support each other not through expertise or fixing, but through shared understanding and mutual presence. If you are looking for affordable peer support, reach out to loriwilliamslimnalspace@gmail.com.