Dear Petalinthewind:

You shared that your parents fought when you were a child. It is always scary for a child to watch and/ or hear her parents’ fights. Fights, aggression, violence, be it physical or verbal, loud sounds, much anger… all that is very scary for a child. No wonder you were an anxious child. Naturally, you were anxious when they were fighting, and you were anxious when they were not fighting because you were afraid of the next time they will fight, wondering things like: father’s voice sounds different, does it mean that he is drunk? Mother’s face looks angry, is a fight about to happen?

For a child with fighting parents, life is about wondering every day: when will my whole world end? Because for a child, especially a young child, the parents are the whole world!

You were anxious and lonely as a child, turning to food for comfort. Fast forward, you are an anxious and lonely woman, a married woman “in a lonely marriage“, turning to food for comfort. And then, in your familiar loneliness, you met a man you once loved.

“We became friends” – for a lonely child/ lonely woman, having a friend is WONDERFUL, a way of finally not be so alone and lonely!

“He warmed his way back into my emotions” – to be lonely feels cold and dark, to have a friend feels warm, like being under a pleasant sun in a beautiful day, smiling.

“He led me to believe he had the same situation as I” – you felt that you were no longer alone in a lonely marriage, that he too was alone in a lonely marriage. Two lonely people finding each other, no longer alone, no longer lonely.

* It reminds me how alone and lonely I was as a child, the loneliest and saddest child in the world, so it felt. All other children seemed happy, playing with each other. Oh, how envious I was, how much I wanted to be happy like them!

“I opened up to him and let myself fall for him” – you thought that the two of you were two of a kind, two lonely children, so to speak, finding each other.

“Until I realised he loved his wife very much and admitted it when I confronted him” – you thought that the two of you were two of a kind, but then you realized that he was like… the rest of his kind: happy with other people, while you were again, all alone in the corner, watching other people being happy. Is this how you felt?

“Every day I hurt and as… I have to hear and see him caring for his wife” – this reminds me again of myself, how I spent so much time, seems like eternity, watching other people care for each other, other people happy together, while I was all alone, watching, envying, wanting to be them.

anita

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