Dear Ishita:

When I posted to you last, I read the first post you submitted on May 17, but not the second. Combining what you shared in your original post April 3 with what you shared in your second of 2 posts yesterday, this is what I get: “I AM STILL HOPING HE WILL COME BACK TO ME… I had this strong belief (still do) that he will return on his own someday”-

– You need him to come back to you, to return to you: You have been experiencing a separation from this young man to whom you are emotionally attached. You are waiting for the separation from him to be over.

When you were a child and a teenager, living at home, you were the “smartest kid in the class, being really fast”, but at 17, studying for exams, living away from home, you felt that you were losing your identity (“I was losing my identity.. losing it”), not able to concentrate, and doing poorly on tests (“my poor test performance”). You wrote this about your experience of living away from home: “when I look back, I feel really bad, for that self of me, how much she suffered everyday, there used to be so many days, I didn’t even feel like getting up in the morning… my sister used to often sit with me on video calls, to help me concentrate while she was working. My mom used to stay up at night until I would stop crying and fall asleep”.

At 17, separated from the people to whom you felt a strong emotional attachment (parents, siblings, maybe grandparents), you felt so anxious that you were unable to concentrate, unable to study, unable to sleep, you cried and suffered a lot, and you needed to be calmed down by your mother and sister on video calls so that you could concentrate and study or be able to stop crying and fall asleep. Clearly, you suffered from separation anxiety before the young man your thread is about (X) entered your life.

You wrote about X: “he is someone who is emotionally not very expressive”. But with you, he expressed a lot of affection, he sort of..  made an exception to his non-expressive nature for you: “he was trying to be much more emotionally expressive, and trying to get to know me, supporting me, and always being there for me”. On your part, you made an exception for him: “I used to generally have my guard on around even my good friends until I am pretty sure I would want to be close to them”, but with him, you let your guard down, and you trusted him: “I have trusted him throughout… I thought he understood me, but maybe he never did… I want to let him know that he just hurt me so bad”-

-In your most recent post, you wrote: “my parents have always made me feel supported and cared for”- reads like you have good parents, parents who often supported you and cared for you. I say “often”, not “always” because it is not possible for anyone to always be supportive and caring. Maybe some of the times when your parents were not able to be supportive and caring were very difficult times for you (?)

anita