Dear Zita/ Reader:

The following are all your words taken from my post above, in order, from April 2014 to August 2018:

“I randomly burst into tears out of nowhere, nothing in my current environment triggers the emotions that I can pinpoint. It feels like the anger, hurt is always lurking in the background, unconsciously ready to pop out at all times. I tend to shop a lot sometimes more than I can afford. It makes me happy, the colors, the touch of the fabric, the momentary glitter in my eyes when I see myself in the mirror looking good in a dress. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to compensate for something. What that something is, I don’t know?

“I feel so lost and confused about everything in life. How do I find myself? Where do I start? I want to live my life with drive, passion and zest. I want to find myself and what I want out of life. I am going about life just like a driver of a car who is perpetually driving on a highway without any sense of calculated direction. I am lost, as lost as a human can be. I cannot bear the anxiety of not knowing where I am heading in life. My brain resorts to random distractions. I find myself distracted by a mundane pointless task, like watching TV for hours. I cannot pick a direction because I don’t know what I want out of life. Why do I not know what I want??? What’s wrong with me?? Just somebody PLEASE tell me how you find a purpose in your life. Am I just some sort of vestigial organ created without a purpose because God was like meh, I will create you and watch you be lost?

“I have had an interesting childhood. I don’t know if this is a byproduct of my childhood that my loneliness is so deeply seated within me, or my own doing. I don’t understand why I feel so alone all the time. No amount of moving cities, countries help. Wherever I go, there I am. Why do I feel so deeply alone? There is a lot of chaos inside me, and I keep searching for that stillness. Only time, I don’t feel tightness in my chest is when I sit beside a still lake. How to fix this deep loneliness?” –

My words with some of your words: “I don’t know if this is a byproduct of my childhood that my loneliness is so deeply seated within me, or my own doing” – no child chooses loneliness, it is never the child’s doing. When a child is chronically lonely, it is always unwanted and always imposed on a child.

“I want to live my life with drive, passion and zest” – this is impossible to do when chronically lonely. Drive, passion, zest and that glitter in the eyes are all the results of genuinely connecting and interacting with others. Not all the time, but often enough. Overeating, abusing drugs, compulsively gambling and shopping and engaging in other distractions are all poor substitutes for the real thing.

“Why do I not know what I want??? What’s wrong with me??” – chronic loneliness originated in childhood and extended into adulthood is what was wrong with me. As a result, I too didn’t know what I wanted. I used to compare my life to a broken ship taken any which way by a stormy sea- passively, helplessly and overwhelmingly dependent on the sea. I felt unable to choose and direct my life. No wonder I was so very anxious.

“Just somebody PLEASE tell me how you find a purpose in your life” – genuinely connect and interact with others, but not indiscriminately, not with just anyone and in any which way. Start similar to a very thirsty person coming across water: first, make sure it’s not salty water. If it is fresh, clean water, then drink it slowly, bit by bit.

anita