A Little Science Experiment

There’s this little science trick they show kids, with water, black pepper, and soap, to demonstrate how soap affects the surface tension on water. It used to be one of my favorite ones, until I realized I was the soap in the experiment now, pushing people away, too scared to trust, and probably too late to fix.

When exposed to connection, a person with a fear of trust tends to react by breaking bonds before they can form, mistaking defense for protection. The pattern always feels the same; it can take three months or a year, but the ending never changes.

It starts when someone makes you feel seen, they talk to you every day, listen to your stories, make you laugh, and slowly become a part of your routine. You begin to care more than you meant to, and that’s when the experiment shifts. The fear, convincing you that distance is safety.

So you start pulling back, little by little, until you vanish into your own walls again. The truth is, people like me don’t fear rejection, we fear not knowing what to do when someone actually chooses to stay. Every time we run, we mistake isolation for comfort, even though it only deepens the loneliness.

Soap never means to ruin the water; it only reacts the way it was made to. Maybe people are the same, not broken, just protecting what still feels fragile. But maybe one day we’ll learn to soften too, to let the surface calm again, and finally let others stay. But some people we once loved the most, and in my case still the dearest, we may never reach again. Even a thousand “I’m sorry” and “I love you” will bounce off the walls we built, lost forever in the space between us.

And in this experiment, who can blame the soap?

Yours truly, now and always.

Salvador Dalí. Loneliness. 1935. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.