Dear Lily:

You are welcome. I agree that it is not a good idea to try to have a conversation, or any communication with him. The message you sent him was excellent. You are way too empathetic toward him, way too understanding… it was good if your empathy would be directed at you. It would be good if you got on your own side, taking your own well being to heart, as the most important thing.

You asked about the healing process: a very important part of it is understanding that your job and responsibility is not in understanding others, their motives, their pain, their confusion… but understanding yourself and attending to your motive, your pain, your confusion.

It is not your job to understand and fix that young man: it was his mother’s job, his father’s job, not yours. You can’t make up for what they did wrong. Your job is to take care of yourself.

It doesn’t matter his state of mind, his motives.. the moment he is disrespectful toward you, your job is to stop that disrespect: not to take it and excuse it and focus on … poor him.. but to protect yourself from his disrespect.

Your patents must not have been on your side. Your well being was not their priority. And so, understandably, you never learned to be on your own side, to make yourself first priority in your own life.

You wrote in a previous post about your father: “my father kept the key for the bathroom, because he was worried about someone hurting themself and then not being able to help.”

I was wondering what you meant… he was worried about you/ someone themselves in the bathroom? In what way?

Hoping to keep the communication going. There is a lot here…

anita