Dear noname:

I want to diagnose you today with the following non-professional diagnosis: a boy with a broken heart. It is a common condition boys and girls suffer from, growing up to be men and women with broken hearts.

You loved your mother (and father) deeply, completely and it was an unrequited love. It hurt where it hurts most- in the softest part of a child, (the heart of a child is not prepared for such a tragedy).

June 2018: “my depression has a lot to do.. with not having a woman around”- your mother (and father). “The lonely feeling has only ever really been quenched by romance for me”, “The only times I feel fulfilled is usually in the company of a woman”,  “I have made amazing friends.. yet I still feel alone and empty”- empty because your mother (and father) didn’t love you back. The search for her substitution led to thrilling and fulfilling moments, but didn’t fill that early life emptiness.

“my wounds from childhood are so deep”, “I  have an underlying constant pain that even when I feel happy reminds me that I can’t be loved”, “this empty lonely anxious feeling that doesn’t seem to let up. It rests in my stomach throughout the day. It’s the feeling right before I have a breakdown but it’s right at the surface”- this wound is that of a child’s broken heart, this pain,  this empty-lonely-anxious feeling is how it feels for a child to have his heart broken. This is how it felt then, this is how it feels now.

“I get depressed because I’m straight up lonely, especially at night”, “the pain of loneliness feels unbearable”, “I get so depressed from being alone more than a couple of hours”, “underlying lonely pain that persists no matter what I do”, “sobbing uncontrollably in my room”, “cried until I was too tired to stay awake”, “curled up in a ball on the floor wishing someone could hear me but of course there was no one there”-

-this is how it felt then, for the boy that you were,  to have his heart broken. I hear you now. I hear this boy crying in his room, sobbing, curled up in a ball. Do you hear him?

“I’ve reached a point with myself where no matter how much work I put in, no matter how mindful I am, no matter how motivated I am, I still get chronically depressed”, “I think to myself ‘you’ve done all this therapy, read all these books, tried all these groups and s*** ain’t working for you”-

– what will work for you is to mend this broken boy’s heart, to grieve that tragedy of that unrequited early love, that early broken heart, too soft for that break.

“What’s frustrating is I know that even if my desire to have a partner was reached I would then be in a constant state of anxiety from distrusting of people”, “I’m distrusting of most women in general”, “My tolerance for liars has fell to zero. I’m stuck in a place where I trust very few people”-

-part of the work of mending your broken boy’s heart is to learn who is it that lied to you, who is it that betrayed you very early on. This way you place your distrust where it originated, leaving you with the clarity required to figure out who in the future is trustworthy, and who is not.

“when I begin to feel marginally better is usually when I’ll restart my downward spiral”, “What I’m struggling with now that I’m feeling marginally better is now can I reach a feeling of peace and potentially joy instead of just being ‘not depressed’?”-

– mend that boy’s broken heart, and you will reach that feeling of peace and potentially joy.

anita