Dear community,

I’m a new member, and I hope that here I will get the help I need.

I don’t think my story will make sense without all the details needed to understand the situation, so I may be a little verbose.

Throughout two years, 2012 to 2014, I was seriously infatuated with another person. As I understand now, back then I was too inexperienced in relationships to put an end to the emotional and physical attachment, which was the cause of a serious depression. If you’re interested, you can read about this nightmare here: http://www.loveshack.org/forums/transitioning/friends-lovers/466222-unrequited-love-there-seems-no-end. In short: first I was running after her, then away from her, but I never found the balance necessary to stop the obsession. The last time I saw her was at the graduation ceremony.

A month later, I moved to a different university in the United States. I was hoping that after these two horrific years, I’d find my happiness and would never be that depressed. In other words, I acted as a rat racer without understanding the well-known “if only” fallacy. Little did I know that I was only running away from the problem. True, for the first few weeks in America I was excited about everything, and was confidently looking for new friends and social relationships. But something within me was broken. Falling in love again was my biggest fear, because I couldn’t understand how that story was my fault. I had my moments of misery when I just wanted to cry out and complain about being a complete failure, and in fact I couldn’t forgive her for treating me that way.

Something changed in February, when I thought I was falling in love in the same irresponsible way with another pretty face. Two weeks of worrying, panicking, talking to a good friend and parents over Skype (it was my first experience of living on my own after 21 years spent with my family!), and suddenly it was over. That was a great victory over myself, and still I would sometimes feel lonely and miserable. Shortly thereafter I had to overcome another attachment. This time it was not random because she was interested in me as a friend, but my mistake was in subconscious thoughts like “oh, it would be much better to get attached to _her_…”

A few weeks later, in one moment I had a kind of epiphany and said to myself: “You are strong. You will get over this too because you have no other choice.” This was how I started setting goals for myself, working on my self-confidence, taking moderate risks and enjoying socializing with as many different people as possible. Within a few weeks, all wise things I’d heard throughout my life suddenly began to make perfect sense for me.

I realized that falling in love should not be a torture and it was up to me. I was not special in any way.

I learned to forgive others and understood that nobody becomes a bad person for no reason. We all want to be happy.

I recognized the power of positive thinking.

I increased my productivity in both social relationships and studies.

I spent more time with my hobbies.

I finally stopped looking for a relationship and realized that waiting for the right person is worth it.

I learned to respect myself and finally understood that my two years of suffering taught me a great lesson and were not in vain.

I was slowly becoming who I am: I’m an obvious introvert, and I stopped trying to fit in everywhere, concentrating instead on finding a few good and reliable friends.

I tried to being honest everywhere and didn’t enjoy senseless Internet trolling any longer. I became kinder.

When I had a lot of stuff to do, I would set myself a plan. All my life became more orderly.

I learned to accept people as they are.

I took almost full responsibility for my life and didn’t blame others for my failures any longer.

However, I realized that there’s still a long way to go before everything settles down. I enjoyed about a month or two of complete emotional stability, with some better and worse days, but without feeling hopeless or depressed. Now, two weeks ago I returned to my home country and my mind told me that something might be wrong.

It seems that right now I’m feeling a bit lonely. I understand that after changing my values so quickly, I’ll have to reconsider all my social relationships. Plus, I’ll miss the contact with positive people, which are quite rare here. I don’t need to explain to you all the power of positive thinking, and you know that a negative person can do the same in the opposite way to make you feel unhappy, even having a perfectly set and logical worldview.

Besides, I probably have a subconscious desire to prove to my former classmates that I’m not as weak as I was a year ago. I realize that in reality I don’t need this to become happy. However, this is a small uncertainty in my mind. I stopped living in the past, but I’m still a bit worried about the future.

Another little problem is that I probably haven’t learned to enjoy my solitude yet. A year ago, it was possible, but only because solitude for me was an escape from romantic suffering when I hated to see her around. I think a hobby can help me, but I feel a bit tired to lose myself in something.

Am I doing the right thing? It seems that I am, but there is too much uncertainty. What are the possible consequences in the long run? I’ll be grateful for any comments or advice!