Hi TinyBuddha,

I love this site and kind of just wanted to throw ny story out there and see if anyone can help as I’ve come to a complete standstill.

I’m an 18 year old girl and I’m having so much trouble with my relationship with an ex-partner (a girl who uses they/them pronouns – I’m gay). It’s a unique story so bear with. We met online a few years ago in a community and really hit it off as we were both people with similar pasts of severe mental illness both in ourselves and our families. I’d never found anybody before who I felt understood my experiences. We had both suffered from suicidal feelings for years. Not the best basis for a relationship, I know, but we fell in love. It was warm and positive and wonderful. I’ll be blunt, it gave me a reason to want to be alive for the first time. I went to meet them in America (I’m from the UK) and it was brilliant. We then started running into problems a few months later. They came to see me. The romantic feelings were the but it wasn’t quite right. By the time I went to stay with them again for two months, they broke up with me, although we had an intense, flip-flopping between platonic and romantic friendship. Go figure, over this time and onwards my partner was figuring out with therapy they had been through child sexual abuse and were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I have just come back from spending summer with them. It has been a confusing and tumultuous friendship but we are finally over for good. Of course, as you might’ve surmised, my feelings still remain in full-force, and I’m beginning to struggle immensely as my ex is looking at having casual relationships again. We have a very open and good relationship and we mean the world to each other but, as I say, I’ve come to a standstill. The prospect of them being with someone else is unbearably painful for me, as is the concept of cutting them out of my life. Through all this I continue to struggle with extreme suicidal feelings and they remain my light, as far as I’ve come and as many other goals and hobbies I love that I have. I’ve gotten myself into quite the pickle. I know I need some good therapy which I hope to get next year (I had help for years in the past but my psychologist unfortunately wasn’t any good). I have an illness that desparately needs to be treated and I’m sure people may rightfully say I need a break from this person until my feelings subside or to cut them from my life. I know what I should probably do but I feel lost and utterly afraid and so, so scared of the pain. I wanted to at least put my feelings somewhere. I subscribe to the practices of Buddhism and they have improved my quality of live sevenfold. But for some reason, now, I just can’t let go of anything – my feelings, my want to have this exlusive relationship still in some form… I absolutely want my ex to be happy and would NEVER stand in their way. But they’re also my best friend. I’m just so scared of everything and I deal with everything so well these days, even living with extreme depression itself, but this one problem has me in a vice. It makes me so scared to keep living and wonder what the point is.