Dear Nichole:

You wrote: “Last year I was in a ‘loving relationship’ with a man… I had my family back home, my mom alive.. I was so  naïve and so happy back then”- it is interesting how when we feel acute pain as you do now, we look back and see the past nostalgically, that is, as if it was good.

“I was so naïve and so happy back then” you wrote today. Let’s see what you wrote earlier:

Sept 26, 2018, regarding your mother: “I always felt that drugs came first than a man first. Our relationship always struggled”. Nov 26, 2018, regarding both your parents and older brother: “I have suffered from 2 parents with addiction, being poor growing up, neglected, sexual abuse from my older brother”. Aug 21, regarding your relationship with your ex in Florida: “I have been in a relationship with a man for 41/2 years and 3 years living together…  I was.. an emotional wreck during our time together… In the 3 years living with him I was verbally abusive when we argued which was often”. Aug 28, regarding your older brother’s wife: “She has been around for 10 years and I am so  over taking her condescending attitude… She hardly says thank you and nothing is ever good enough… She just never lets me be me.. I don’t want to deal with her. Last time I went to visit I exploded on her and that makes me look like the guilty one”.

See, you weren’t “naïve and so  happy back then”, not when you were a child, not as you grew up, not in the 3 years you lived together with your ex, not when visiting your older brother’s home. It just seems that you were happy now because you are miserable and you make believe, once again, that there is happiness where there hasn’t been happiness but conflict and struggle.

“I am too fragile to be alone right now. I need support and love and a hug. I need some one to love me without anything behind it”-

-but you are not fragile, it only feels this way. What I mean by it is that you survived many years without what you need, what we all need. You can survive longer. Better not look for love where it is not. Better see reality for what it is. Pretending it is different, forgetting what it is, will not do you any good.

Healing is not about repeating the same  old same old attempts. It is about giving up on what doesn’t work and attempting something new that has a chance to work.

Visiting your older brother and his wife is a bad idea. A modest hotel room in the quite scenery of the desert is a better idea (if you can’t get a refund for the plane ticket). You can arrange to see your older brother’s child if you are there, spend some time with her, but with her only, then leave.

anita