The Vending Machine: And Then You Get Crickets
Over time you begin to see things more clearly, and one thing that becomes clear is how some people in your life treat you as a vending machine. And you probably didn’t even know that’s what you’d become. You just kept showing up, kept giving, kept making yourself available because that’s what you learned love looked like. That’s what you learned safety looked like. You pour yourself out over and over and somehow it never occurs to you to wonder why you’re always the one who’s empty.
They walk up, press a button, and expect something to come out. Your time, your ear, your energy, your heart. And it comes, it always comes, because somewhere along the way you learned that giving was the price of being loved, and being safe, and even being seen at all.
They don’t say thank you. They don’t ask how you are. They never ask how you are. They just take. And then they’re gone until they need something again.
And the crazy thing is you don’t notice it’s happening. Because it doesn’t look like taking - it looks like friendship. It looks like love. It looks like the only kind of relationship you’ve ever known.
It’s never about you.
Until one day you ask for something - something small and inconsequential, and you get crickets. Nothing.
And that silence hits different. Because suddenly you can see it, all of it, how long you’ve been standing there with your arms full and your tank empty, mistaking transaction for connection, wondering why you feel so hollowed out after every exchange.
That gut punch is not the end of something - it’s the beginning.
You are not a vending machine. You never were. And the moment you really know that, feel it, not just think it, everything starts to shift.
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I hope this meets you with love and understanding today. Please like, leave a comment, and subscribe for more HeartBalm Healing. As always, from my heart to yours!
