Anita

I am not sure if I have ever said this before, or if I have said this enough times but I wanted to say thankyou. Thankyou for everything you have done here.

I have been on this forum for half a year, I have opened up about my problems and you have always responded with patience and objectivity. You have helped me to gain fresh insight and perspective on some of the things going on with my life, and to see things as they really are. Even writing about these things is a huge help – I sometimes arrive at the answer by myself after writing about what I need advice and insight into but you confirm what I have suspected to be the case with some of my problems (I guess I need to learn to trust my own spidey senses more!)

It’s almost like you have helped me to discover parts of a jigsaw puzzle – I don’t think it is nowhere near complete but it’s building up. I’m not sure what the final image is going to look like but I think it is starting to look like a blueprint…A map with directions on where I need to go with my life…Things are making so much sense now…

I guess regarding the past comments I have made on this topic about the idea of seeking out the past – it’s been 8 years since I left secondary school and I still haven’t left. I guess some people just never really leave high school. That was the first time in my life I ever felt real rejection when my friends just buggered off from my life and maybe I never quite healed from that. I changed myself a lot in those 8 years in a desperate bid to shake off the identity I had back in school. Maybe I changed myself not for my own benefit but maybe I had the idea that if I changed and became this completely different person my friends would love that version of me even more. On a few occasions when these people did pop up out of the blue again, they remarked about how much I had changed and that gave me a huge ego boost – I was finally winning their approval for once. The novelty soon wore off and these people ended up disappointing me again. I can’t keep fooling myself like this.

Anita I want you to know I am feeling so happy and great about myself these days – for the first time in ages. You have helped me to identify and confirm what is false in my life and what no longer serves me. These past few months here on TinyBuddha have been a real eye-opener.

And I’m making many changes right now – not to win approval from anybody else, not even people from school. I want to be the best version of myself just for myself. I am concentrating on my goals and plans now – it took a while to get back up from being emotionally wounded when I lost that job last spring but I still want to go back out there and travel.

I once again say thankyou Anita – you are an incredible human being and what you do is incredible. I wouldn’t be as cheerful and optimistic as I am now without your advice and insight.

Forever grateful and in your debt

Joe