Dear Seaturtle:

“I just wonder how that conversation would have gone and if him hearing me say I was considering breaking up and more clear as to why..“- he’d say that he has no words to describe how you made him feel.. wouldn’t he?

“I wonder if he would have heard what I was saying and felt the urgency to be more aware of his feelings, feelings he denied, passive aggression that he had previously denied and gaslighted me about“- it’s a fantasy that following just the right words and an explanation coming from you, he’d go through a metamorphosis. It’d take many months of active psychotherapy and lots of proactive work, and not using weed daily, to make such profound, deep changes.

“(I)  Question if I did try my best and make me worry that if I could go back I would have given him more of a chance to get better“- there is a fitting saying: you can’t squeeze water (introspection, insight etc.) out of a stone (a person whose regularly stoned, pun intended), no matter how long you stand there, day and night, squeezing.

“It is very painful for me to think that if only I had given him the opportunity for a full conversation, rather than ending it so quickly out of fear that he would gaslight and confuse me, that maybe it would have worked out“- fantasy.

“maybe this is all just the sacral (child) acting out because of how much I miss his physical presence… I either need to reach out to him and see if he will hear me out; or I need to squash this potential regret somehow“-  I think it is your suppressed need and desire of childhood and adolescence to be seen and heard by those who won’t, that is acting out at this time.

“The interesting thing about the tiger dream was that.. My level of fear/anxiety was equivalent to the aggression or affection of the tiger. Low fear and the tiger was your friend… My anxiety was barely simmering and the tiger very slowly bit into my leg, insinuating that if I showed more fear I would be attacked. Then I woke up“- this reminds me of the spider (N) and the fly (Seaturtle) analogy that I made earlier: the fly caught in the spider’s web, vibrating it with fear, the spider notices and approaches the fly to attack/ prepare it as a meal.

“Still anxious Seaturtle“- can you watch a good movie/ listen to your favorite music.. do art, take a hot bath, so to relax?

anita