Shutting doors like wiggling ears, the involuntary reflex

In discussing my situation with my therapist, I came across a metaphor. If my emotional vulnerable self is my apartment, then it follows that people are allowed to be in different places. Some folks might be able to get in the building, others onto my floor, some into my hallway, and maybe one or two people inside my apartment. We all have levels of emotional intimacy that we share with people.

In my current situation, it feels like I had one person in my apartment/bedroom, and now that person is leaving. I wrote a bit about that in my last post, which makes a lot of common sense with why I feel so isolated and alone. I have some folks in my hallway, outside my apartment, but it isn't as simple as inviting them inside.

My worry, is that in opening the door to have my friend leave (for whatever her reasons are), once she's out there, she's stuck out there, and it'll take another two years to move her back into a place of comfortable emotional intimacy, if ever.

So now, I feel torn at the door, feeling the pain of that loss, and the emptiness of my apartment being solely occupied by me.

The suggestion put forward though, is that the power to open or close that door, feels absent from me. It just seems like a thing that happens outside my control. As if it were less a door, and more a gooey-cell membrane that one got through via osmosis. A process that takes a long time, and one I'd rather have control over.

If she opts to exit, I know there's only a brief period in time before that barrier/door hardens over again. I don't want that, but it just seems inevitable as people grow apart. That loss, feels substantial, and I dislike having to grieve for it. The pain of doing so only seems to make it harder to let people inside, in the first place.

I realize that opening that path, is an exercise of muscles I can't feel, like wiggling your ears. I've seen other people do it, I know, in theory, I should have the muscles to do it, but I have no idea how to access those muscles, or what they feel like. Keeping people at a distance is so, involuntarily ingrained into who I am, that it seems obligatory.

I wonder if that is the reason my physical attraction to people is so muted. If at some point I just turned off in order to keep people at bay, or if it just never developed fully since. That's a different subject though.

I do think it would be easier to see her go, if she wasn't the only one in my apartment, and I've been looking, but there just doesn't seem to be anyone knocking, or, at least provoking a response from me to get me off the couch.