Dear Hella:

I hope you are okay with me having the time and the inclination to try to understand better. Well, I re-read once again all your posts, not mine and not other members’ who replied to you, only yours.

You left your country of origin and for five years you lived in a town while attending university if I understand correctly. You and the man this thread is about (I will refer to him as H) are both from the same country of origin and the two of you individually integrated into this one group of friends in this one town. Following the individual integration, the two of you started dating and you became his girlfriend.

Being a part of this friend group, your position in it solidified as H’s girlfriend, meant a whole lot to you, it meant a place where you felt that you belonged, accepted and liked, one of a social unit. It was your Home.

As a result of the relationship with H ending, you lost Home. You feel exiled from home, living away in another city half an hour away, and when you visit the group you feel awkward, H “categorize me as an ‘other’ in front of our friends”, you wrote. Gone is the feeling of one with this social unit. You no longer have a home.

Before you were one of them, now you are the “other”. When you became an “other”, it “literally felt like a rug had been pulled from underneath me when it was over and I was supposed to somehow find myself alone””, you wrote. This is the experience of losing one’s home and finding yourself alone.

The last time you visited your former home, while riding in the train back to your city, “there were nonstop tears.. I have felt SO alone during all this time, and especially the year after he and I broke up”.

You blame H for exiling you from home and you blame the other members of the group for not supporting you in this exile process: “I feel a lot of emotions towards the people that were around during the time that he and I dated and years after, who did absolutely nothing to show support… passive group of people… silently supporting him”.

Exiled from home, you wrote: “It is so uncomfortable for me to be this outcast person that had to  rebuild her life”, and you feel “ostracized by almost the entire city”.

In summary, it reads to me that H and the friend group meant so much to you and you lost it. You want it back but it is not there for you anymore.

I assume this friend group and H in it as the glue that solidified your position in the group meant so much to you because you were very much alone before you met this group and started integrating. Maybe you were that much alone in your country of origin.

The fact that H was from your country of origin meant a lot to you, the genetic-almost bond that solidified the home/ family feeling you had with him and with the group.

anita