Dear miyoid:

You shared about this friend/ rival: “she talks about getting more opportunities, more easy ways to earn money.. her easy way arounds… I see her as more successful than me… she lets herself be most of the time.. she also lets the words out of her mouse (mouth?) easily”.

Earlier this month, you shared that when you were 13-15, you spent a lot of time alone in your room, doing stuff on the computer: “I felt like the most alone person, I’ve always wanted to be like other girls, wanted to have what they’ve had like their families, their opportunities regarding financial ones, and even their boyfriends… I just wanted to experience stuff, because I’ve felt left behind”.

This friend/ rival is one of those “other girls” you wanted to be like, those other girls you were jealous of because you were so alone (not experiencing stuff with others) and they were not alone (experiencing stuff).

In July 2020 you shared: “my depression is chronic… alone and hopeless.. To sum it up even more I’ve had a depressed childhood as well. I was rarely happy and I didn’t know why”-

– you had a depressed childhood because you were so alone, too alone, for too long. A child needs connection with other people: a mother, a father, a sibling, a friend.. friends. A child cannot be okay all alone, for too long.

A child needs to experience life, which means, to experience interacting with others, playing with others, sharing feelings and stories.

Being all alone, for too long, feels like death, or imprisonment, similar perhaps to this imaginary situation: a child is all alone in a cold, gray prison cell, the only person she sees is the person who brings her food on a tray twice a day without saying a word. All alone in her cell, she can hear children playing outside, happy voices, laughing as they play under the warm sun. Of course, the imprisoned child wants to be any one of those other children free to play outside under the warm sun, of course she is jealous of them.

What happens to a child who is alone for too long- she closes in, she becomes “rough, emotionally unavailable”- partly dead, emotionally, but only partly because the child still longs to experience life, to be truly alive. She wants it but she doesn’t know how and she is jealous of others who seem to  know how.

I don’t see your anger/ jealousy regarding this friend/rival as an “ego problem”. I see it as a consequence of being alone and lonely for too long, carrying within you this unsatisfied natural longing to connect with others and experience life with others, connected, interacting.. no longer alone.

anita