Dear noname:

“My emotions were always secondary to theirs”- healing is about making your emotions primary, and theirs- secondary; in theirs I mean everyone. Not a single person’s emotions should be primary to yours.

I just read the part about you rushing to unwrap your gifts (often, I read a part of a post, respond to it, then proceed to the next) and thought that you rushed because you were excited to find out what the gift is.. and then I read that you rushed because you wanted to get away from your parents and go to your basement: “I couldn’t wait to be away from them and the hair trigger attitudes that filled the air with tension”.

And now what I am thinking is: you shouldn’t visit your mother anymore, where the air has the same tension, I believe. I remember you visiting there Dec/ Jan 2020 and you were feeling badly there. Don’t put your sister’s emotions before yours by sacrificing yourself and visiting her in your mother’s home.

Next, I read that your “stomach turned a bit and reminded me of that feeling of walking on eggshells never being able to relax in their presence”- I am thinking: their presence was bad for you then, it is bad for you now.

(No pressure there, by the way, that you cut contact and so forth, no pressure of any kind, I am giving you my thoughts as I read your post piece by piece, that is all).

“my favorite part of the day in my adolescence was being home alone or just me and my sister. because it meant peace”- I can relate to time alone, my time of peace when I was a teenager, listening to music and fantasizing about a different kind of life.

“I have been excited lately to find out what can happen in my life if I’m able to heal from my childhood.. I can’t believe how far I’ve come already and I can only imagine how great life can be if I keep working on healing.. I’m thirsty to know who I am”- yes, you did come far. I don’t remember reading such positive excitement and optimism from you before.

“I’m getting a little off track here from the original purpose of getting in contact with the boy I was before depression”- no, you are right on track: the excitement and thirst and optimism you expressed right above do belong to the boy you were before the depression.

Your love of skating, I think it is at least partly about what you wrote in the beginning of your post: “couldn’t wait to be away from them”.. “as quickly as possible”.

“No one really encouraged me to skate”- you certainly didn’t need to be encouraged to get away from that “hair trigger attitudes that filled the air with tension” aka your childhood home/s.

And next I read: “when I was fed up at home I would skate about 2-3 miles to the park and hangout all day and come back when it was dark”- yes. If you put your inner child’s emotions first, primary, you would promise him that you will never go back to that home when it was dark.

Again, I am not pressuring you, I am okay if you continue to go back to your mother’s home, or your father’s. It’s just that the boy in you- the boy from before the depression- doesn’t want to. And someone has to speak for him. So I do, I speak for him here: he doesn’t want to go back there, not for anyone. Listen to him, respect him, don’t push him back as secondary to anyone.

I have no doubt about what I wrote just above. Can you imagine.. do you think it is arrogant of me to think that I know better than you do, what the boy in you wants and needs?

You mentioned belonging with other skaters, and later, that you “feel belonging when I’m in the woods”- you didn’t belong in that home, so you escaped to the basement. The skating park, the outdoors, nature, woods.. that’s not just an escape, it is moving toward belonging, feeling excited, moving toward living life.

anita