I didn’t close myself. I just stopped being reachable.
I learned the difference between being open and being available slowly, and then all at once. It happened somewhere between answering messages out of politeness and noticing how my body reacted before my mind did. I was still open — emotionally, sexually, philosophically — but I was tired in a way that desire alone couldn’t fix. Not a dramatic tiredness. A quiet one. The kind that settles in your chest when you realize you’ve been generous with access, not intimacy.
For a long time, I thought openness meant accessibility. If I was honest, liberated, sexually confident, then of course I should be reachable. Of course I should respond, explain, soften, make space. I confused consent with convenience. I confused freedom with being perpetually on offer. And I didn’t notice how much of my availability was fueled not by desire, but by habit — by the subtle expectation that if nothing was wrong, then saying yes was easier than saying no.
What changed wasn’t my sexuality. It was my nervous system.
I am still open in how I feel things. I still experience desire vividly, physically, sometimes intensely. I am open to connection, to curiosity, to pleasure that doesn’t need to justify itself. But availability is different. Availability lives in time, in energy, in the reality of my body on a specific day. Availability asks questions openness doesn’t. Am I here? Am I present? Do I actually want this, or do I just not want to disappoint?
Sexual openness doesn’t mean perpetual readiness. Desire has moods. It has weather. It has days when it’s sharp and days when it’s quiet, and neither of those need to be explained. I used to think narrowing my availability would make me colder, harder, less generous. Instead, it made me more precise. My yes became clearer. My no stopped trembling.
Some people mistake openness for invitation. They hear honesty and assume access. They see comfort with sexuality and imagine proximity. I don’t correct them anymore. I just step back and let the misunderstanding sit where it belongs. Not every assumption deserves clarification. Not every boundary needs a speech.
I don’t advertise my availability now. I let it be discovered. Slowly. Mutually. The way you discover whether someone can actually hold what they say they want. I’ve learned that availability drains faster than desire, and that protecting one protects the other. When I stopped negotiating my availability to appear kind, my relationships became quieter — and more real.
I can love abundance and still choose scarcity in access. I can be sexually open and emotionally selective. I can believe in freedom without offering constant entry points into my life. These things are not contradictions. They are distinctions I learned through exhaustion.
I am not hard to get. I am simply not always there.
Saying “not now” preserved more intimacy than saying yes ever did. And the strangest part is this: when I stopped being available by default, nothing collapsed. People adjusted. Desire didn’t disappear. My sexuality didn’t shrink — it settled. It stopped performing. It stopped proving. It became mine again.
I didn’t close myself. I just stopped being reachable in ways that cost me more than they gave. And that truth, once you feel it in your body, is impossible to unlearn.