Dear Bun:

This will be a long and detailed reply. I will boldface quotes from what you shared on this April 2022 thread and use regular print for quotes from your previous May 2017- January 2021 threads. I will italicize here and there for emphasis:

“I will look into my own place, though I have had amazing roommate experiences previously, in the last few years” –

In your various threads you did not describe a single good, let alone amazing experience living with anyone, be it a roommate, a friend, a boyfriend or a family member. You wrote back on January 2021: “I wish I could just live alone. Living with others I feel constantly their toy and needing to please them when I am just a human who can only handle so much” – living with others has not worked out well for you.

“I will look into my own place” – good plan.

“I went to Indonesia and had an amazing healing, spiritually educational experience and felt very balanced” – this is not at all what you shared in your December 2019 thread titled: “I am miserable at my yoga teacher training”. Notice the word “miserable” in the title of that thread; it is quite opposite to the word “amazing“.

In your Dec 2019, thread, you shared:  “I…  thought taking a yoga teacher training abroad would help. I got on the plane… Week one is done, and I feel my entire spirit has left my body… I feel bad energy from the girls here… constant mingling drained me…  a roommate- who further drained me…  mostly she talks about herself and problems nonstop like a narcissist conversationalist… The group is about 12. I like 3 – the rest seem egotistical, self-involved… very judgmental, and a lot of egos… for dinner they run like vultures leaving little food left for me … Brutal schedule of being around low energy people 24.7… here (Bali, Indonesia) …Being judged for being black, or apparently a lesbian- which also drains my spirit totally. The yoga instructor said ‘I am not here to help you; I am just the yoga teacher’ when I brought up my struggles with this… Now we clearly have animosity. It got so bad I missed class, and asked to be placed in my own room... I feel this experience has sucked the light out of my body – the girls, the lack of sleep, the lack of alone time to focus on my mediations and goals… I feel drained, misunderstood, like negativity is being sent my way with the stares and treatment from the girls and locals. 3 weeks of the course left here. I have no positivity left in me. I feel sadness, anger, EXHAUSTED, disconnected from my soul, thoughts, judged for my skin color- and like I also need probiotics that I cannot get here”-

– Maybe the 3 weeks that followed the first miserable week were better, but in your next thread five months later, May 2020, you shared nothing about healing. Instead, you shared about having had “hectic months”, following the Indonesia experience. Notice, you used the word hectic, which is the opposite of very balanced: “After some hectic months, I decided moving … I have only been moved in a few weeks…I’m having a panic attack feeling I can’t breathe from their aggression and judgement“, May 2020.

In January 2021, and in April 2022, you shared that after you returned “to LA from over a month of learning and healing in Indonesia”, you moved in with your sister (“there is tension in the house”). Next, you moved to an apartment complex (“It caused lots of stress“). Next you stayed with a guy friend (“I get into argument with him”). Next, you moved to your brother’s house (“I feel a buildup of stress being at my brother’s daily… I start to think- I should just move. I can’t take it”).

Next you flew to New York, to stay with a man you “didn’t know well, but more so online”, but left after he allowed “orgies in the living room”. Next, you flew to a female friend’s apartment but felt stress there as well (“Since arriving I can’t help but have negative aspects of her personality… drinking, other kind of drugs”). Next you moved in with your mother and brother. Your mother “made efforts to incarcerate my brother and I… exploded… left the house, came back with police… resulted in me going to jail, having to be bonded out, and now having my record smeared with a false battery charge“, April 2022. Next, you stayed in hotels with your brother for 4 months, split “after a silly argument“.

Next you stayed in hotel rooms by yourself for 4 more months. Next, you rented a room with a guy who was on drugs, and you got pregnant by him. Next, you flew to Los Angeles, and stayed for a while with a male friend who was your boss at one time (“he freaks out… He tells me I can’t stay there any longer“). Next you stayed with your sister who repeatedly kicked you out and took you back in (within that turmoil, you terminated your pregnancy), and next and currently, in the last 3 days, you’ve been living in an apartment with a roommate, but stress is already there: “I feel uneasy about my roommate already. She does have high anxiety, but I find it hard to be trusting even when my guard is down“, April 6, 2022.

* In all these moves… where are the “amazing roommate experiences“?

“If you can help me understand more about the drama, please do. I hope to grow and learn and never bring negativity” – it is impossible for me to help you understand more about the drama when I can’t rely on the truthfulness of what you share. But here are a few of my understandings, nonetheless, following my study of your threads since 2017:

1) You often expressed an optimistic, light and friendly attitude, but you have suffered long-term from depression, social isolation and feelings of loneliness (“I woke up feeling like sh**, again. It’s quite repetitive and I’m just like OK hey sadness, f*** you too. Now I’m going to continue my day”, Dec 2017; “I am always trying to think optimistic”, Nov 2018; “I don’t really have a support system in my life. I don’t have close family, and only one close friend really… most of my time is spent entirely alone… I do feel lonely, and honestly feel just having oneeee person would help…I feel all of this time without true human connection has dampened my spirit… I am 21, I have never had a boyfriend mostly casual hook ups”, April 2018; “When I first arrived, I wanted friends badly… despite my best efforts I didn’t grow close with anyone…. No positive social interactions or meeting new people/friends”, Nov 2018; “I just haven’t felt happy… not having close friends… I am usually alone so I don’t usually have someone to go with”, April 2019.

2) When you are around people, again and again, you feel stressed, and the living situation ends badly, examples: “some of my distress comes from my roommate/ apt. situation”, Dec 2017; the Dec 2019 Indonesia experience, and the many failed living situations with people since.

3) You believe that you have bad luck: “I was plagued with bad luck… a constant string of bad luck, back-to-back… It just feels like I was just dealt bad cards but why?”, March 2018, “What invisible force is working against me?… Things kept happening where I would meet just bad people… It just seems like everything is purposely getting in my way, throwing me off… am here, thinking positive, putting in effort- so why do I keep getting tripped up? What’s with the bad luck?”, Nov 2018.

My closing thoughts: I have no doubt that you had bad luck having been born to the people you were born to, and into the circumstances you were born into. (I had bad luck in this regard myself). But now, that you are an adult in your mid-twenties, you have the option of making better choices so to make a better life for yourself. You don’t have to remain a victim of people and circumstances. You can take charge of your life, as much as it is possible for you to take charge.

To take charge, you need to live alone while attending quality psychotherapy in which (1) you’ll be honest when sharing about your life, (2) you’ll gain insight into your childhood, into your family relationships, and into your part in creating your adult life-circumstances and experiences so far, (3) learn emotion regulation skills so to avoid impulsive choices and behaviors, as well as communication and assertiveness skills so to minimize your stress when around/ living with people and so that you can get along well with other people.

With honesty, insight and the building of these skills, you will be able to create the support system that you need, form and maintain close relationships with new people in your life (people you’ll get to know and evaluate); you will enjoy more and more “positive social interactions”, and you will finally experience the “true human connection” that you longed for, for so long, no longer usually alone, lonely and sad.

anita