Dear Tee,

“You rejected when I said that you should take into account your own trauma, not just B’s trauma.” No I didn’t reject that, I have already done that but you have to also recognize that most people are selfish and she is still going to try to undermine me. I am just not sure if I can compare my trauma with hers because even though she put herself in the situation, knowing  the helplessness she might have felt and the feeling of being violated by a stranger tortures me every day. I have nightmares occasionally of her being violated by another man. So imagine how she may have felt when she had to actually go through that experience. That is why I said the primary trauma is still hers. Nobody has genuinely cared for me and I just find it difficult to value my own feelings and emotions, but I still recognize them, which is why I am working on healing. But this new girl that I talk to is so selfish and blind that I find myself going out of my way to deal with her as well like a pig that never learns. I am going out of my way to try to understand how she is feeling while she is ignoring my feelings.

“Yes, that’s what she expected you to do. But frankly, I don’t care what she – who is a narcissist and doesn’t care about anyone else – expected you to do. I am asking what you needed at that moment. What was your need when faced with that trauma.” Everyone expects me to suck it up. And quite frankly I regret opening up to people anyway since history has shown how they respond when I open up. It just makes more sense to just suffer in silence and not tell anyone if this is the consequence I have to endure.

“But if you want to heal, you’ll need to start thinking about your own needs too. You’ll need to start developing empathy for yourself, not just for others.” Yes I know that, but as a human, u need some kind of companion. At least one real friend. I don’t have that. I don’t have anyone to talk to. I have NOTHING. All I do is sit in my room and study and do music and talk to myself in order to work on my “healing”.

“However, you say that you still feel obliged to help her.” I don’t feel obliged to her. But imagine knowing that ur carelessness lead to someone being harmed. It doesn’t have to be B specifically. But obviously I will feel very sick if I found out someone got hurt cause of me. And that is related to how I was treated by everyone else, always seeing me as the problem, treating me like a burden and everything.

“She is using you (or rather, exploiting you) to meet her needs. And we are not talking about survival needs, but wanton needs, such as buying her expensive gifts. Or paying for her trading class – which is her investing in her own education. Why should you be responsible for that?” She may be dumb enough to ask for those things but I am not dumb enough to bow to her like that. I am not going to be responsible for that, but if she were to put herself in danger, I don’t want to deal with the guilt of knowing I didn’t do anything to save her ass, especially since I know I could have stopped what happened to her in January if she had told me in the moment. The pain of the helplessness I felt back then still lingers within me.

“If you can reframe that what you are doing for her is not helping her, but fulfilling her whims – perhaps it would help you to say No to some of those whims?” I do say No to her whims, but she doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of No. She is still going to do it and I can either choose to stay at home and stress over her safety or I can go with her and hopefully get some money.

“The real deal would be to realize that you are not your father’s property and that you have the right to some autonomy.” Can u explain how I can go against the idea that my parents paid for everything and took care of my physical needs and etc? Cause until I get a real job with decent money, I will still have to follow my parents’ rules. Like the worker at a company. The worker may not be the company’s property, but they still have to follow company rules unless they choose to change company. So until I can change my financial source, I have to follow my parents’ rules. But even then, nothing can substitute the number of years during which they took care of me, so I still feel some form of obligation to them.

 “To make whom happy? Your father? Or those girls, whom he tells you to talk to? But who think of you as a clown?” I want to make everyone including me happy, but that doesn’t work due to the conflict of interest. So I end up sacrificing my own happiness to preserve others. I go out of my way to try to understand the struggles that other people are going through. But then I get thrown away in the end. Someone has to sacrifice something anyway. Could be a parent sacrificing their dreams for their child, could be a lover sacrificing certain goals to be with their partner. Nobody thinks of me as a clown, but they still treat me like one. Never considering my feelings, how I feel or anything. I go out of my way to empathize with others and then they throw me away like some toy when they feel better. And I label myself as the clown for being dumb enough to fall for it every time because I end up caring for people too much. The girl finally told me that she didn’t want my friendship. I tried so hard. Why do they keep rejecting my friendship? I tried so hard to be a good friend, to be understanding. Now I am too afraid to put effort into making new friends because I know that they might reject me like the others did.

Paradoxy