Dear Lucy:

First priority: promise yourself that if and when you cheat on your boyfriend again, that you will end the relationship right after. It is your responsibility to  do-no-harm to others, I call it social responsibility.

Second priority (right behind the first): personal responsibility: help yourself. Clearly you are suffering and have  been suffering  for a long time. I would like  it if  you no longer suffered. You cried when drunk because of the pain inside. You cheated perhaps because it was exciting, a distraction from that pain. Like any other animal we are born with the  instinct to run away from pain.

Alcohol, that  makes us feel better, even if we  cry,  it  feels good to cry, release that tension of holding the pain in. And the cheating, well, it’s something to do, something you make  happen, something to disrupt the heaviness  of keeping that pain locked  in.

I remember all too well my  own childhood, not a lot of detail, but I remember  the heaviness, that never-ending tension, the no relief. The eternity feeling to it. Of course I had  to escape, any which  way. There was nowhere  for  me to run to, so  I ran to fantasy, daydreaming, and  later, I ran to distractions, have things  happen just so to experience something different, different from the same old,  same   old heavy, eternal tension, that tangible misery.

Can you relate?

anita