Dear Lisa:

Thank you so much for your kind words. I don’t know if you are following the activity on your thread, more than five months since your last post here. If you are reading this and would like to communicate further, please let me know.

anita

Dear Lisa:

What a WONDERFUL, pleasant surprise to see your name and your post first thing this Wednesday morning! And even better- to read that you are doing better than before!! I am thrilled about you being back here and looking forward to read from you again, whenever you feel comfortable posting, if you do. (I want you to do what’s right for you in regard to posting and in regard to every other part of your life!)

And thank you, I am well and better since you are here this morning!

anita

MeRRy   ChRistmas     Lisa  !!!

anita

Dear Lisa:

“There is not much I can say right now. I would just be saying the same things I have said before“- say the same things you have said before in a different way, and I will respond in a different, more empathetic, understanding way than before!

anita

Dear Lisa:

This morning, I re-read most of your posts on this thread and a few of my long replies to you.  Your started your first of two threads, the Alone thread, back on May 1, 2017, and I replied to you on that same day.  You wrote back then: “I am female and 48 years old. I have never had a relationship. I have always longed for one. Every day since I was a teen I have imagined being in relationships“.

By the end of your 26-page Alone thread (Jan 1, 2019), you were optimistic: “Happy New Year!! I would like to take your advice Anita and start a new thread. I think I have said all I can say in this thread about my insecurities, frustration, jealousy, hurt….I am just going around in circles. I would like to make a more positive tone thread… I want to start with what is going on right now and talk about and being more proactive in reaching my goals. I am very optimistic right now but I have not come up with a name for my thread. I will think about it today. It will be optimistic“.

Two weeks later, on Jan 15, 2019, you started your 2nd of two thread, this one, titled Choosing Love, indeed an optimistic title: “I want to start this new thread to open myself up to the truth about why I am alone and what I can do to change that… I call this thread Choosing Love because I feel that maybe I have rejected love… I want to change my focus from wondering why love does not come to me to why I am obviously pushing love away“.

Today, 5 years, 1 month and 21 days later, I want to reply to the above in the simplest way I can:  you ‘ve been Alone for five+ decades because people hurt you too much and for too long, too early in your life. It started before you were even born, when you were still in your teenage mother’s womb, and it continued throughout your childhood aka your Formative Years.

And throughout those years, no one protected you; no one helped you. You were truly a child/ adolescent Alone. Emotional pain and severe anxiety were Formed into your brain-body (expressing as ADHD and OCD early on). Understandably, as a child and onward, you’ve viewed people (in real-life, not in your threads) as dangerous. Therefore, you reject and push away people=danger.

Except when daydreaming, something you’ve been engaged with as an adult: when daydreaming, you accept (not reject) people and love,  people= love (not danger)… in your daydreams: “I have an even bigger obstacle, something called maladaptive daydreaming. I have been relying on this since I was around 12 years. Anyone who knows how old I am knows how long I have been using this coping mechanism. I am completely aware of what is real and what is not so it’s not delusional… I do not engage in maladaptive daydreaming when I am with other people but a great deal of my time is spent on it. This is a challenge because I have become quite accustomed to it.” (April 7, 2019)

Feb 14, 2020: “I am right now alone in my misery again… human beings are insensitive creatures… vile disgusting hateful creatures to ever walk the planet. I hate humans. I hate them. No one stops these creeps from stomping all over the world and do whatever they want. No one protects the helpless“- back to pessimism, back to people=dangerous creatures, and Lisa alone vs dangerous creatures.

April 14-17, 2020: “I am alone with no one to help me…. I wish I had someone in my life to help me along the way… I don’t know what to do. If only I had that one lifeline growing up“- Lisa Alone vs dangerous people.

Jan 21, 2023: “Nothing to report except more of the same. People whose only goals in life are the same as reptiles…crushing the hopes and dreams.. they are free to break rules, oppress, ban, and spread lies about others“- people= dangerous reptiles.

March 2, 2024: “There is not much I can say right now. I would just be saying the same things I have said before“- a childhood experience re-lived.

Back to the title of your 2nd thread, Choosing Love: is there a way for you to choose love outside daydreaming: to see a single person in real-life as Love, not as Danger: to see a person not as a bully or someone who supports bullies (the two kinds of people you described), but as something else, someone who can be trusted..?

I hope so, it is my dream that it will happen in your life.

anita

* Dear Gregory:

I am so very pleased to read from you! It was only a few days ago that I thought about you and your family when hearing news about South Sudan. Thank you for posting again and I appreciate your kindness over the years.

I am pleased that you found interest in Lisa’s thread, in her life’s journey. We’ll read from her again when she is able and willing to post again (.. and again), I hope.

Thank you so much for your support in the post you submitted for me back on July 7, 2023. At the time, I read and re-read your post and cried as I read it. it meant a lot to me. Here’s what I liked reading so much: you called me a “superb person with strong personality“, “A mother“, you expressed empathy for me, and you were the first (and maybe only) person who asked me to return to the forums (“Kindly come back to Tiny buddha anytime you are willing to!“). You asking me to return was a strong reason for my return. I left you a message on that thread very soon after I returned to the forums (Aug 30, 2023).

I was impressed by what you wrote back then about what you consider to be good/ honest people: people who are “interested in a mutually enriching relationship“, people who create real, genuine intimacy (not “pseudo intimacy to make you feel comfortable and to trust them… pretend to like the same things you like… to make you feel connected“), people who reveal different sides of their lives, not “only one side of their life“, people who acknowledge the truth and invite others to speak their truth (not those “gaslighting you into silence“).

As I read the above this morning, I see that I need to further cut down on my people-pleasing behaviors in real-life so to avoid pseudo intimacy (which is what I offer when I present a pseudo me), and I want to be a good person in all the ways you described above

This is perhaps the nicest thing you wrote to me back then: “Nothing can dim the light that shines from within. You have changed the lives of so many people around the globe. Example: myself“- if I changed something significant in a single person’s life, that’s good enough for me. Thank you so much for writing this, Gregory!

Back to Lisa and her choice of the title of this thread, Choosing Love: may each one of us, do our best to choose love, peace and justice for all.

anita

Dear Lisa:

So very good to read from you again, thank you for posting and for the kindness in your post!

Choosing Love is the title of your thread. I happened to stumble this morning upon a post you submitted about Love back on May 23, 2018, it has a poetic feel to it, as I read it today, and the content is profound:

“In my world it exists, in my dreams it exists, in my soul it exists, I believe it exists…but in the real world love does not exist. You can not see love in 2018. It doesn’t exist for the majority of people. Money exists, sex exists, status exists, Real Estate exists…  How many people would marry if they received no monetary or physical pay off from it? It’s like selling yourself isn’t it? A product on a shelf for people to pick and choose from.

“Marriage should be rare and with no demands. No demanded gift on Valentine’s Day… It’s not love to demand gifts, yet men do it because they get some kind of pay off. I don’t like business. I don’t like money, I don’t like meaningless exchanges, I don’t like aggressive, ill mannered people. I don’t belong in this world and yet I’m here”-

– your post back then brings  Corinthians 13:4-8 to my mind this morning, as it also talks about Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. <sup class=”versenum”> </sup>Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. <sup class=”versenum”> </sup>It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Interestingly, the sentence right before the famous quote above (Cor. 13:3) reads: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”.

The title you chose for this thread back on Jan 15, 2019, Choosing Love, is more meaningful to me today (April 2024), as what the world as a whole needs to choose than it was in the relatively peaceful times of the pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine war, pre-escalated Middle East wars of Jan 2019.

anita