Dear lulianeartchild:

To be real with  (“I’m trying to be real with people and  with  myself”), your feelings need to be  seen and taken seriously by someone. Someone has to notice how you feel, to listen to  how you feel and let you know that she understands, let you know that in a respectful way.

But when a person’s feelings are  dismissed, the  person is dismissed. The real person goes into hiding until such time that  someone sees that real person. Seen, the real person will come out of hiding.

Your attraction and longing for your fitness instructor (and to the teacher in school before), may very well be just  about this: to be seen, noticed, respectfully.

With the real you hiding, you feel empty (“My life is absolutely empty”). To communicate with someone who sees you, that fills that emptiness. We are social animals, to effectively communicate is to feel truly alive.

anita