Dear Anita,

I’ve been thinking about what you said.. Of course, it did cross my mind many times before.. and also recently. Very often I told myself I don’t want to go back there ( Romania ) because I feel afraid of falling back on the old programming / on the old patterns etc. In the last 4 years, I’ve spent about 2 to 3 months a year living there. It didn’t really feel like I was disappearing again but I often felt uncomfortable around my parents and very often I realised we don’t really have that much to talk about. We don’t actually talk that much when I’m there because it appears that there isn’t much to talk about. Also, we didn’t really talk that much before, since they were too curious about everything and as a result I was too secretive. So that hasn’t really changed that much.

Also, in the last years I was working online so I’ve had my own source of income – although they didn’t really let me pay for many things and always insisted on paying for everything –  treating me like a guest. ( something I should be used to as I grew up in their storage room ).  Now I’m thinking it would be different if I was there unemployed, knowing I have to depend of their support for every step I want to take. But then again after the work with the school here ends – my situation wouldn’t be any different.. except for the fact I am abroad and not there in their presence. I would still be supported by them financially unless something else comes up in the next 10 days or so.

I have to decide what to do now… Since I bought the ticket I feel quite stressed – getting more and more headaches now. If I stay here I won’t be spending time with my girlfriend –  and I understand that her company is the kind of company I want around me. I feel lonely without her, and I miss the time we used to spend together. I have a couple of friends here too which I meet and talk to sometimes, and I’m lucky enough to have a few globally which I can connect to via phone. But I’d like to spend time with my partner.. and right now she won’t be able to come here. So maybe it just makes total sense for me to go there again and try. Maybe this time I manage to find more work and establish myself there. I just don’t quite know what to do if that doesn’t work right away. It might! But what if it doesn’t? In order for me to be there ( without work ) I would have to be supported by my family. I was thinking it would make more sense for me to go there for the period of searching for a job rather than depending on them financially while abroad. I would save money by being there and in many ways it makes more sense.. No?

These days have been sooo stressful. I’m so tired of those f*cking courses too… In many ways it feels like I took the first way out the moment things started to fall apart. ( losing the bar job and finding out the courses will end quite soon ) But it did feel like the right thing to do. Did I act upon my fear of the challenge of having to find more work / facing the difficulties of losing my jobs ? Or maybe I just saw the opportunity to take action and go back and be close to my girlfriend. I’ve been trying to clarify this these last days.. for some reason I’d like to know why I do the things I do. It’s part of both my healthy introspection and my not so healthy overthinking.

My parents keep calling me these days encouraging me to find more work here. I told them I’ve lost the bar job and the school is also running out. I didn’t tell them that I have a ticket to Warsaw yet. I know I’d have to face a big wave of their disappointment. I’ll do it these days… It doesn’t really change anything if they know or not but right now I just didn’t feel like it. Having their words of disappointment and discouragement is quite literally the last thing I need right now.

Ideally I’d go to Warsaw and find work right away.. that would probably be the best way things could play out.

You know.. it bothers me a lot that there’s a risk of me falling back on my old patterns If I go to Romania. It really sucks.. because I do know that my brain developed a very difficult reality because of the way my parents treated me but I was hoping things could be in some way healed. It really sucks knowing that my parents are in a way, a threat to me. But then again.. that has been very often the case in the past.

Or maybe until I build a more solid foundation and stronger boundaries I’d have to steer away from them?

Thank you Anita! Reading all those things I’ve said in the past put together by you hasn’t been a light read.. but it shows so much.

Robi