Dear Niv:

First I will retype your share (it helps me process information doing that), second will  be my understanding:

You are now a thirty year old woman who “struggles with major depression.. totally alone in life”.  You are attending graduate school and working. You had dreams of “being a successful person in academia” and have been interested in having a romantic relationship with a woman from academia, but you never had a romantic relationship.

Most of the time you feel that you are “just a loser and piece of s*&^ that no one wants, just like my parents didn’t want me either… no one ever is really interested in me”.

You grew up “in a toxic environment” with a mother who was/ is depressed and “emotionally absent in general”, a father who “never cared at all (and wasn’t present)”, and a “grandmother who’s BPD”. You wrote that you repressed all your feelings a lot of your life and that you were an angry child, that you were in on and off therapy since you were about 12, made a lot of progress. You have “unloaded so much crap!”, but still struggle because “what is left is still quite a lot”.

My understanding: what was and what is left that is “quite a lot” is your anger, an understandable, valid anger. It is anger that is keeping you alone. The rage of a girl left alone, unattended to, is not a mild force. It grows and festers and stays.

Let’s look at the two women you were interested in dating: ne had a boyfriend so you were okay with moving on, but the other, she was single and after you showed her interest, she “chose someone else”- that activated your anger. Because there you were interested in her, desiring her, and she could have attended  to you, reciprocated your interest because she was single, and yet she chose someone else.

“I would have given anything for her to be with me”- just like you would have given anything.. just like you did give everything you had to be with your mother. And yet, your mother at times at least, did she not, attend to someone else, while  leaving you there to yourself, alone.

It is only recently, late in my healing process, that I remembered how intensely, as a young child, I desired my mother’s attention, no desire is stronger than a desire of a girl for her mother. Like you, I believe, I got angry, very angry. This anger made relationships impossible for me too for the longest time. And it is this same anger that I felt a few moments ago, feeling it every day.

There are many women who had terrible childhoods and yet they have romantic relationships, but their fear/ anger dynamic is different than women who don’t manage to have a relationship. They may be more fearful than angry, perhaps. Maybe their anger is turned inward on a regular basis, while yours often enough turns outward, toward other people, and it shows, keeping them away.

What do you think/ feel?

anita