Hi Anita

I’ll first address your latest message and I appreciate you for following up with me after I went MIA. I have been working 6-7 days a week lately to try to make up for the almost $800 car repair bill I just had to pay. So to address your question, yes I did get my car back a few days ago and it is driving okay so far. I don’t want to speak too soon. Also, my appointment with the ENT that I scheduled about the lump in my neck is for December 7th so I’m still in the dark there. I’ll keep you posted. My eating problem has been really flaring up badly lately and tonight it was terrible. I still feel physically sick from how anxious it made me. I feel this every day and it’s really hard to be hopeful that one day I will conquer any pent up trauma stored in my body if I just keep re-doing this daily. Kind of like what we talked about a month or two ago… how the body can only handle so many cortisol spikes. I know I say it every post update but my pain and grief about this has only been increasing with time because I see he actually just said a lot of things to make me feel better and didn’t mean them as a way to make things easier for himself. I know a lot of people will do this without realizing it to manipulate others and whatever those motivations are tells you about what kind of person they are. I know my crying throughout the day isn’t helping my throat and swallowing issue.

I follow a lot of avoidant attachment content trying to understand things from a more objective level to stop taking it so personally. I’ve stayed no contact since he ghosted me. However, I saw a video stating that avoidantly attached people rarely even care or notice you’ve gone not contact with them. I don’t know how to unfollow or block him. I think I keep waiting for it to click with me and feel right. I hate him thinking I hate him but he also is okay with just never talking to me again after stating he wanted to, apparently.

“I entered adulthood as a very needy child in a young woman’s body (thin, not womanly). I needed so much. No young man could have possibly given me what I needed even if he was very serious abut me and saw a future with me and cared a lot… There was simply TOO MUCH that I was missing: a sense of self-esteem, a sense of any amount of confidence in my ability to function independently and effectively in the world.. There was too much SHAME in me.. and GUILT. Too much unfinished business from a bad childhood.” — This is exactly true for me as well. I read somewhere the other day that when an anxiously attached person puts someone on a pedestal, they literally make them “perfect” and so they create unrealistic and harsh expectations on that person. So when this person disappoints us, we are overly critical over them and it pushes them away. I already kind of knew this but just being reminded… it makes me sick to my stomach. In my toxic relationship of 4 years that ended in 2019, I spent that entire relationship holding in my feelings until it completely destroyed me and I had to leave. I’ve done that my whole life and after therapy, I was determined to finally speak EVERY SINGLE feeling and concern after sitting with the emotions and trying not to be reactive. I feel with my current ex that I then did this too often and as much as he is at fault for not being honest with himself and me, I am at fault for being too critical of him. I can understand why he felt immense pressure to meet my concerns and needs over time. He told me it stopped being “fun.” The real Stacy showed up with REAL needs like you said. All this breakup has shown me was that speaking my needs gets me dumped. I understand that relationships are sometimes only meant to be for a season and that speaking boundaries filters out those not meant for us but at what point are our boundaries literally too much? I feel I am too much and agree with what you said about no man/person being able to help me. I think it’s really admirable that you have finally gotten to a place where you have that balance now and feel safe with yourself and choices.