Dear John:

These are quotes from what you wrote May of this year, over six months ago, regarding the breakup of a one year long distance relationship: “it freaking  sucks… it’s killing me… killing me though… sucks… OMG. This is so hard… sucks… I will never be the same  again… there  is still a hole  in my chest… I am so screwed up… I’m so lost”.

Six months after, end of November, yesterday, you wrote: “This time of year is so hard. Its’ hard… Just tough… It really hurts today… Very hard though… It’s killing me. I hope that I can get through today feeling better. It’s just killing me. God I hope I can get past this all together someday… this sucks”

Your expressed distress did  not lessen at all during six months of posting, venting and ranting (two verbs you use to characterize your posting).

During these six months you’ve been having a relationship with another woman, spending a lot of time with her and her kids, heavily involved in their lives. You have two daughters and a new grandchild. Yet these made no difference in your expressed  distress. At one point, not  long ago you described something  that just  happened in your life and in your home, a long time friend and roommate shot himself, committed suicide in your very home, yet that was a passing event, mentioned and forgotten.

Nothing has distracted you from your expressed distress  over the breakup of a one year long-distance relationship.

You shared some  about your childhood, how your mother abandoned you, waiting and waiting for  her to pick you up from school and her not showing up, having moved and gone. You also shared that you currently have a relationship with her and you expressed something between neutrality and disdain for her, currently.

This is my understanding  at this point, my effort to help you regarding your confusion (“very confused… Help me please”, the title of your thread): I think you are stuck being  that child waiting for his mother. For a child it  is a very traumatic event or events,  to be abandoned by one’s mother, for her to not be there, (or be there in a cruel way to the child). The desire  for a good mother never  goes away for the traumatized child. The lack of  a mother  early on creates an intense hole (“a hole in my chest”, you wrote) and it craves and  craves to  be filled. Your thread is an expression of that craving.

For a child abandoned by his  mother, nothing else  matters, nothing can distract the  child for  long from that loss. And  nothing  has distracted you so far in the last  six months.

For a child, a mother  is the most  important  person in the  world,  an entity,  not  a person. For the child, it is not about  who the mother is as a person, it  is her role that matters, being his Mother. And  here, on your thread, you wrote that  you don’t  know what  it is about  her, that you can’t  explain it, and through all these pages, you didn’t describe her much, nothing really other than a few superficial things. It is so because your craving for her is  not about who she is as a person. It  is about  her being your Mother.

Thing is now you feel  nothing  for your mother, maybe some disdain or disgust.  You forgot, I believe, how you used to feel about her when you were a child, a young child. Here on this thread, page after page, you can read what you wrote, this  is how  you felt about your mother when you were a young child.

There is nothing  stronger, nothing more  intense and more  enduring than the  craving of a child for a  mother who abandoned the child or  who  turned against the child. That craving  doesn’t  go away. In your case, you express it right her as you have done since May.

anita