Thinking about you, Alessa, hoping you’re.. safe and brave 🛡️ 🦁

Oh, okay, Miss L Dutchess. Yes, I knew you finished your Master’s a few months ago and that you found work. I don’t remember reading tat you no longer live in the city you disliked. Good thing!

I hope that you find an apartment closer to the office and that soon, you’ll be happier 🌈😊

Anita

Dear Miss L Dutchess:

When I read your very last post, I felt sad because I know how difficult loneliness is, and the fear of being alone forever.

On the very first day you posted on tiny buddha (April 4), you wrote: “I find myself wishing I had tried my luck at my childhood dream of becoming a famous singer/actor or being married with kids by now since at least I’d have purpose in my life… the present feels so hopeless as I am 26, living in a city I dislike and have no friends, and chronically single… I have a NVLD, social anxiety, GAD, and depression so I have never been the popular, outgoing, life of the party, who enjoys small talk with strangers.”

In your most recent post, Sept 13, you wrote: “Unfortunately college was way worse socially and I never made friends in 4 years. I’m hoping things will get better soon but am really down and frustrated. I turn 27 next month and am worried I’ll be alone forever.”-

I too dreamed, or daydreamed, more precisely- about becoming a famous singer/ actor. As a teenager (and maybe in my early 20s too, I don’t remember), I used to listen to music on the radio and vividly imagine myself singing or acting on a stage, audiences of thousands cheering for me, millions all over the world watching me on TV. It felt so good.. and I daydreamed this way for hours at a time, as far as I remember.

My actual life was very different from what it was in my daydreams. No one was cheering for me in real life. I was extremely alone and lonely, and I felt like a Nobody.

No wonder in my daydreams, I was a super-famous Somebody.

I was anxious and depressed growing up and onward, suffered from Tourette’s, OCD, major depression disorder (diagnosed in my 20s) .. and ADHD as well as several learning disabilities (including NVLD traits).

Looking back to my teenage years and 20s.. and onward, I now see that as intensely as I wanted friends and a boyfriend, that’s not how I came across.

Inside I felt very needy of friends, but outside- I appeared cold or uninterested, closed-in, distrustful, suspicious. No wonder peers stayed away from me.

Presently, I am becoming more open, more trusting and it shows. I come across differently and people react to me differently, more open with me, more trusting of me. And I no longer feel lonely. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to finally not be lonely anymore.

I don’t know if what I wrote above applies to you, but just in case it does, I thought I’d share. Sincerely, I hope things change for you too, that you wouldn’t feel “alone forever.”

🌸 Anita

Hey Tom:

Thank you and I hope you find some joy in your weekend!

I want to re-read our past communication on Monday and get back to you then.

Take care,

🤍 Anita

Adding to the ending of my post right above: Thank you, Tee for all your wishes for me and I wish you all these things back. You definitely deserve them!

Hi Peter and Everyone:

Thank you for this poem, Peter.

Mostly what I take from it is this sentence: “Stillness within motion. Presence within unfolding.”- I am thinking of it as stillness and presence within e-motion, as in before reacting to such emotion as hurt or anger, or any other emotion, to be still within it. Not to judge it as “bad” and push it away, not to be blinded by it and react to it without seeing what it is that I’m doing, but instead- to accept it, to stay with it, to experience it with quiet presence even when the emotion feels like a storm.

* James123, in one of his threads, referred to it as Radical Acceptance of emotions.

To not be scared of my own emotions and to not be led by my emotions to a path where I hurt other people, and/ or myself.

Here’s another part I find particularly meaningful this morning:

“Yet within each breath, each moment, the sun is rising and setting.
Between every imagined happening: A birth, a death. A cry, A laugh.
Here a first kiss… there a first slap…
The web of life, everything connected.”-

These 4 sentences are taking me beyond the I, connecting me to the We. I want to reread what I quoted here, these 6 sentences every morning like a mantra, something to start the day with.

🤍 Anita

Just in case you are back to this thread (“Safe and Brave”- perfect title) anytime soon- i will be away from the computer for the rest of the day (2:16 pm here).

With Care, Anita