Dear Monica:

You wrote: “Valuing reputations WORKED for me in the past, before I came to Korea”- I am sure that the reputation you had in your home country, when expressed to you, caused you to experience very good feelings, thrilling, electrifying, invigorating. And so, yes, it worked like extra special chocolate cake, for me, temporary.

You wrote: “Gyunnie created MY self esteem when we were dating. It worked, Anita. People went like ‘WOW’ when I told them whose my boyfriend, they respected me and talked to me. Even asked for my help.”- same thing, very good feelings, thrilling, electrifying, invigorating and… temporary.

In between those moments there were other times of desperation that you choose to not remember (examples: your mother’s rejecting words to you at home and Gyunnie’s unavailability, how difficult it was to end a date when you did meet). So you hold on to those moments as if that was all that you experienced.

You wrote: “I have NO reputation. No reputation = no self esteem”.

You are not twenty yet and the way things are, you are set for a lifetime of hunger for reputation, trying to feed that hunger and remaining hungry. This is so because self esteem, that feeling of being okay is something that as an adult cannot be dependent on what you think other people think of you.

Even if you were “the next first lady of South Korea”- you would still have this hunger. You would have moments of exhilaration, but at the end of those moments, there will be that aching hunger, craving for more reputation, more respect, more.

That hunger you have stems from lack of love in your life, lack of unconditional love. I wrote to you a post which you ignored, it was the first post on October 7. You ignored it because you had an update.

Re-read that post.

anita