Dear Anita,

It feels weird since I felt like opening up tinybuddha and reading the topics, and I’ve seen that you’ve replied to this topic 8 hrs ago.

“I know that I can tell more, in time, if he wants to listen“- ask him if he wants to listen, if he is patient and can wait and be gentle with you, not pushy, not demanding.

I feel like he has lots of stuff to open up to me, maybe more traumas than I have. He has been an understanding person even if he acted a bit weird sometimes when I act cold, and then we both apologized for our behaviours. I feel like he is the most adult relationship I’ve ever had. I can be more open, still, I have the fear of abandonment and I feel anxious when I don’t get an answer for like 5 hours. But I know that’s my problem and he doesn’t make me feel insecure about losing anything. He has been giving me signs, telling stuff, or reminding me that he loves me during the week which makes me feel safe. Sometimes a few times in a day, sometimes a few times in a week. I can feel and observe how my thoughts and anxiety can differ accordingly with his words and I also see that it happens within my mind. I don’t know how stable he is with his emotions. I tend to be very unstable with mine, and he is like me in so many aspects. But my fear of abandonment actually prevents me from being unstable regarding the love or affection I feel towards somebody since my fear doesn’t let me be free or be myself, I guess. Or maybe I’m just loyal and I see it like this. However, fear of abandonment preventing me from being unstable in relationships and making me loyal is the most rational thought I can find in this pond of thoughts. It makes sense to me.

Your subconscious mind jumps immediately to the unfortunate outcome: I will be abandoned. And this makes you cry inconsolably.

Yes, this is maybe the most powerful self-sabotage I have in my mind. And I try to distract myself from that, just like in my childhood. I distinctly remember that whenever I wasn’t able to distract myself with the computer, with a game, or something interesting, I was suddenly depressed and suffocated. I couldn’t help myself but cry in those times. Then school started and I learned to press those emotions a bit. They only broke out rarely, when something I couldn’t resist happened. Like a little fight where my emotions got triggered and at the end, I couldn’t help myself but cry because my necklace was broken. I wasn’t sad at the necklace, it didn’t mean anything. I was just highly affected by the incident and I couldn’t hold myself. But I told everyone that it was the necklace and it had a meaning to me. I was in 4th grade then.

I don’t think you’ve shared before that your mother actually left you after the divorce to go live with her brothers, while you stayed with your father. (You did say she abandoned you physically, but now you explained how it happened).

This abandonment was a bit vague, that’s why I still have a hard time understanding it. I cannot recall how many months it took, but first, she left us for a while to go live with her brothers. I must’ve spent at least 2 months or maybe more time with my dad. Then I guess they’ve seen that I wasn’t able to endure, my mom made my uncle come and get me so that I can be with them in that city. After some time, we were back in our hometown and my mom left my mom officially so I kept living with my mom. I have never thought this period has given me some damage till 2018. Only after that year, I’ve started to understand I was experiencing the same emotions when something bad happens or when I’m faced with abandonment.

Your father was narcissistic and didn’t really want to care for you, so he left you at his friends while he went to his hobbies. Which means he didn’t want to spend his free time with you, maybe even his weekends?

He is actually very emotional. He even feeds off of emotions, sad ones. But he is very bad at empathy and expressing his emotions. He wasn’t able to connect with me on an emotional level rather than the intellectual stuff he tried to impose upon me. I’m very grateful for that intellectual stuff, he actually contributed a lot to the person I am today. But I can also see how he affected me and gave me damage. I’m guessing, thanks to him, I have a very hard time trusting people, and just like him, I always have doubts about people. I always think about the worst-case scenarios and even after the tiniest tip that people gave away, I always think that they might harm me.

He was around when my sister was a child and a teen, so he affected my sister way more than he did to me. She acts exactly like a narcissist now. For my father and my sister, there are two types of people. The ones that they own, and the ones that they don’t own. My mom and me, since we’re family, they have always owned us, and they didn’t care about our families. They only got what they could get from us, they got their nutrition as much as they could get and we were nothing at the end of the day. For the people they do not own, they are charming. I’ve had so many children at my school during my primary school that hated me since he was my father. They thought that this was an amazing thing and they even used to envy that. But they didn’t know the whole story, they didn’t know how he behaved at home and the weird thing is, I was lost in this contradiction as well. I didn’t realize what was happening, I was just lost.

I also got lost explaining how he is, but yes, his understanding of time was having me read books or having me study, that was all. He was my teacher, nothing more. I have no memories of hugging him in a way that would make me feel safe. And I didn’t know that I needed that then, I was just doing what I was taught. If I had known that, I would just teach him how to do it. But I’ve always been so introverted near him. I didn’t have the courage to ask something like “can I play with the computer” let alone show affection. But I know that he didn’t know how to do it either. So I cannot feel any anger or grudge towards him, but I have my regrets even though I know I’ve done my best. It’s weird how people can have regrets for something they didn’t do, maybe that’s empathy or self-sabotage, I’m not sure.

– Something about that ex-boyfriend of yours, who I thought was a terrible boyfriend to you, something about his attending to you,  made you feel better when you felt that “weird, ugly feeling”? Better than anyone has made you feel in a long time, and maybe for as long as forever?

Yes, I would say so. He was the most understanding person when he was the good version of himself. But at other times, he made me feel really bad too. I know it was really unhealthy now and I know it was the good thing to do, even if I wasn’t the person who broke it off. He was powerful enough to do it. I still feel weird about him, I sometimes miss him and see him in my dreams. It’s a weird feeling, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that here before but I feel similar emotions towards my mother. I feel lots of guilt. I feel bad because of the hard things they have to or had to endure. Both of them made me feel bad but both of them didn’t do it on purpose. I know their hearts, so I cannot feel any bad feelings towards them, only the good ones. So it’s very hard for me to forget him. But I know that this is the right thing, to move on.

I am sorry that you were not helped here, by posting here. I hope that the psychiatrist you’ve been seeing back in October is helping him, and that deep inside you are a bit less lonely, a bit more able to choose, a bit stronger.

Don’t be sorry, just being understood is very valuable and I don’t think I’m not being helped. I’m trying and observing, writing here everything makes me observe even better and you pointed out things that I wouldn’t be able to find or interpret myself. I’ve been seeing the psychiatrist approximately every other month, online. It’s not in-depth yet, it’s going very slow. But I feel like I shouldn’t expect too much, I’m giving it time, she needs to know me first as well. As for him, I guess he hasn’t been able to find “the doctor” yet from what I’ve heard but my fingers are crossed. I sincerely want him to be happy.

Other than that, things are going well for me. Mundane challenges, my job, stuff I try to enjoy. I try to read more, understand more. I don’t know what else I want from life but I guess I’m working on the security first. Both in terms of emotions and finance.