Dear monica:

I will try my best, based  on my life experience and learning, to undo that baggage  of nonsense for you  (“I feel like a heavy baggage of nonsense”):

As a young child you wanted to make your parents happy (“I questioned and wondered about things like wondering why they seem happy”), but whatever you tried, you failed to make them happy to have you in their life (“they.. remained silent and distant for the  most part”).

Your parents preached to you, and they still do; they didn’t interact with you and they still don’t  interact with you (“My parents still preach to me”).

You don’t remember now how life was when you were a young child. You don’t remember trying to reach out to your parents, trying to make them happy to have you in their lives, but you did try,  all young children do.

You don’t know how empathy feels like because your parents didn’t, and still don’t, express empathy for you (“I don’t  know  someone’s empathy supposed  to feel like”). You don’t know what connecting to people means because you tried as a young child to connect with your parents  but they didn’t connect  with you, they rejected  your efforts, so you closed  off (“I don’t even know what connecting to  people  means…I feel so closed off even tho I do share these things”).

You think that there is something wrong with you (“I feel like there’s something wrong with me”) but it  isn’t that you were born defective or inadequate. What is wrong with you is that you don’t have the experience of being  the receiving end of empathy by your parents, you don’t have the experience of your parents interacting with you. Instead of interacting with you, what they did and still do is preach to you, criticize you, interrupt  and disturb you.

The reason you find refuge in single player games is that no one interrupts you or disturbs you, and this is all your parents do for you: interrupt you, being physically there to disturb you (“I play games I love and do things I enjoy without anyone interrupting me or physically there  to  disturb me”).

What you clearly need is the connection you never had. No child can grow up healthy without that connection, but it  is not too late. This connection you need, the interacting, the empathy, you cannot experience that with your parents, but with someone else, a competent, empathetic therapist will be one such person and place.

It will be difficult but it is very  possible for you, I believe.

anita