Dear Anita,

Yes, it is probably good for me to live in the tent in the hostel for a while. To have more chance to interact with people and to practice, but also to practice more with taking my own space. Not to feel obliged to interact with people when i don’t feel like it or with people who live here as well. Not to react to what i think are their expectations: if i want to be in my own space, maybe that is good as well.

The fear, yes you have a point there. We survived it many times in the past, and now we are adults, we have more power over ourselves and over the way we view the experience of rejection or being attacked by somebody. We can learn to view it as a reaction of them, not a reality about us. That is something to practice with.

Today i decided to go to my previous workplace, because i still hadn’t received a certain document, and i wanted to ask for the reference. I was afraid to go there and see the people (to see the person who this topic is about), i was afraid to see the boss, and i was afraid to ask for the reference, afraid that they might laugh at me or say no or something (ideas that my fear makes up in my head and that i consider then as reality). There are 3 bosses, and i thought that the female one was the most reliable, the 2 men might be more likely to forget. And i know that she usually works on Wednesday. She is also the one that i was most scared of, because she yelled at me when i gave my notice. So when i was considering, should i go today or tomorrow, i realised: i am so scared of her, it is better to go today to see her, to deal with my fear.
To make it harder, when i was walking towards there, telling myself that today i will finally go, the car of this colleague just past me. I only saw his numberplate, didn’t dare to raise my hand or smile. So that made my heartbeat already go up like crazy. I was sitting in the park for on hour, observing the fear in my body, how my heart was getting crazy, how my limbs were heavy and tensed… Then i decided to just go, even with my fear, i saw her, went to talk to her, and she explained me why she doesn’t have the document. Then i asked her for a reference and she answered vaguely that it is ok. So it wasn’t bad or terrible at all. I find these kind of experiences very demanding, later i got back in the hostel and people were probably trying to be nice and i got back into paranoidness. But i hope, by doing more of these things, the fear might get lower or i might get more in control of it. It feels more liberating to feel the fear and not pushing it away. I guess this was a good example how the fear was there, probably originated from my childhood and then being fed for so many years by my own way of thinking, and how i can choose to allow the fear and do what i want to do anyway. I don’t want to let myself be restricted by my fear anymore.

And i’d still like to come back to the original title of my topic. I feel so bad about ignoring him so often, keeping away, looking away from him. I just read an other post here, where the person was angry about a girl treating him like that, and i realise: i have done that a lot to him as well, while he has been very nice and attentive. I guess that it is best to give up my expectations, or hopes for further contact in any way, and let him go, don’t try to mess with him anymore if it so difficult for me to respond to contact. But, some people have told me the past days: we have to forgive ourself. Maybe that is what i need to do in this situation, forgive myself for hurting myself and for pushing him away. Understand myself and be compassionate. I know that it is extremely hard for me and that i am not used to this, and that i just didn’t know how to respond. That i tried to change this pattern in my clumsy way and that it often didn’t work like i wanted to. The main thing is that i can learn something out of it. I need to be nicer with myself, spend more energy on self-care, and be more aware of how i feel around people – especially nice people because then is when the fear and the pushing away are the most strongest. But it is hard, because when the ‘danger’ of having somebody nice come closer, is the greatest, then my fear gets so overwhelming that it plays tricks with my mind. I seem to be putting myself in some kind of a psychosis, of a trance, and it is hard to see reality. For the whole year that i worked there, i was trying to fight thoughts that everybody there thinks i’m a stupid thing and too much – of course i was glad to leave when i got the chance. But the thing is, people probably didn’t think like that, but these ideas get so persistent in my head, because it is a situation where i see people daily, so getting quite close.
Maybe the next time i will recognise easier if somebody is real and nice, and maybe i will manage to respond a bit better. In any case, i have learned to see something from this, to identify a certain pattern that is very strong, and that is probably valuable. I still hope that, if i do decide to leave this town, that i get to see him before i leave, talk with him, say some things, look him in the eyes and be honest. But i don’t know if that might happen. And he might not even be interested at all in talking with me anymore. But i want to be nice to myself and know that i am not perfect, nor supposed to be, and that i need to give myself time to learn these things, they are not easy, and certainly not for somebody who is used to so much rejection and being ignored – first by my parents, then even much more, by myself.

Well, it is easy to say, forgive myself, but i find it difficult. Difficult to let go of the regret that i didn’t do it differently, difficult to think that i acted in an annoying way towards him. I guess that is where many of my problems originate: attachment. To emotions, to thoughts, to the past, to people, to ideas… Maybe that is because of fear, fear of being in myself and in my own power. I don’t know.