I've started to feel like everyone around me would be better off without me around so much

I don't mean that in a scary way. I just mean I've started to feel like I take up too much space in people's lives. Like when I reach out I'm bothering people. When I need something I'm being too much. I've started pulling back from everyone because it feels easier than feeling like a burden. I cancel plans. I don't text first anymore. I just kind of wait to see if anyone notices and then feel worse when I'm not sure they do. I started thinking about where this feeling actually came from. Whether there was real evidence that people found me to be too much or whether I was filling in gaps with my own fears. Most of the evidence I came up with when I really looked at it wasn't actually there. I was predicting rejection and then acting on the prediction before anything real had happened. I realized that pulling back wasn't protecting me from feeling like a burden. It was just making me more invisible and then confirming the feeling. The withdrawal was creating the very thing I was afraid of. And the people in my life couldn't show up for me if I kept disappearing before they had the chance. I reached out to one person I'd been avoiding. Just a small thing. I didn't make it a big deal. They responded immediately and were genuinely happy to hear from me. It didn't fix the feeling overnight but it gave me one piece of evidence that contradicted the story I'd been telling myself. I'm trying to collect more of those moments instead of hiding from them.