Hi Anita,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I would describe my relationship with my sister as an open, honest and close relationship wherein she knows everything that’s going on in my life. We crack jokes together, we play silly games together because they are fun and we also have serious discussions when either one of us needs the other ones opinion. When she vents, I’m always a patient listener and she’s the same way with me. I share a similar relation with my best friend and a handful of close friends.

Dear Anita,

You are correct in your assessment of this case. But I’ve gained my trust issues from a few backstabbing erstwhile friends as well. Many people whom I blindly trusted went ahead and betrayed me. It was all high school drama so I got over it pretty soon but these things did have an impact. One after another these so called friends kept revealing their true colours. I had quite a few experiences with such people. Over a period of time I realised that most people are only loyal when they require help or think that you may be of assistance to them in the future. It could be that my choice of friends was probably wrong for some time. I would open up emotionally pretty soon, until I learnt not to. Then practicality took over me which taught me to trust no one but myself. I distanced myself from drama creators and saw the visible difference. Later, I was fortunate enough to find a few others like me.

I’ve seen my sister’s previous relationship fail and a close friend of mines too, who went into depression after that. All of my past experiences and seeing my sister’s and friend’s relationships fail contributed hugely to how I feel now. So overall, I do mostly shut down when it comes to men but also when it comes to selecting friends. Basically any relation where I would be vulnerable, makes me sceptical. But now that I have sorted out the friends issue by limiting the people I open up to, it’s not an issue anymore. That’s how I went from school popular girl to the selectively-associates-with-people girl. It doesn’t bother me if I don’t have a bunch of friends anymore. I have quality people in my life.

Dear Anita,

Yes, I do have good relations with family and friends. But I’m unable to spend a lot of time with them as I’m always busy with my studies. My best friend is pursuing her engineering so she stays busy too and we don’t meet up regularly. Texting was never our thing so that doesn’t work well. My other friends are busy with their lives as well, just like how I am. Everything pretty much revolves around my studies in my life and that’s what makes it boring.

Yes, sometimes I feel the absence of having a man in my life. The worst part is that when anyone tries to enter my life I don’t entertain it. This is where the “impossibly high standards” come in. I don’t judge people by their looks or other exterior aspects and those aren’t the standards that aren’t being met. It’s all just shallow men talking shallow things and that I find irritating.

As you said, being a selectively-associates-with-men girl is hard for me because now most of the men around me are intimidated by me and that’s exactly the kind of men I don’t want to be around. And I don’t want to find other men to associate with because I fear that they will again think I’m looking to be more than friends and even though I tell them repeatedly that I’m not, they will insist and it all takes an ugly turn (its happened before a couple of times).

The problem, I think is, I’m not open to trusting anyone new but sometimes I get envious of the people who are. And this in some unexplainable way is affecting my self confidence and making me more critical about some factors of myself. I know it is all very weird so thanks for taking the time to reply to it 🙂

Dear Anita,

I recall those times with a slight smile on my face now. There were enormous responsibilities placed on me but not by my parents. They didn’t want me to stand for the post at all because they thought I was too “innocent” for all the politics. The pressure on me was placed by my teachers and also by myself. It was a private school and the principal was a family friend so that’s why I felt pressured. I wanted the superiority of the post as much as I wanted to prove that I’m as good as my sister. As it happens, I was indeed made the head-girl and I think I did a good job. While I was shaping my leadership skills I also realised that when I’m busy being the best, nobody can hurt me. And yes, I would definitely say that those experiences had a powerful impact in shaping my personality. But I still had trusted a few so called friends after that. Once they broke my trust I completely stopped expecting anyone to be trustworthy.

That hollow feeling comes and goes. I think it’s because I’m not doing all the fun stuff that teens are expected to do and sometimes that bothers me. This happens only about 20% of the time now. 80% of the time I’m content being single and being the way I am. But even this 20% is affecting me somehow. For instance, where first if I would have a zit I’d not bother about it because I would think that I have nobody to impress and a zit can’t make me feel bad. But now I stress about it and end up applying makeup over it before I leave my house.

The Ice Queen thing is definitely a resonance of the hollow thing. But it’s deliberate in some way whereas the hollow feeling wasn’t. I trained myself, over time, such that I don’t get too attached to anyone hence not giving them the power to influence my feelings. I thought it made me a strong person. I didn’t consider its cons.
As far as the not being happy after achieving any goal, that still exists. Even today, after any achievement, my first thought is ‘what next’. I don’t take the time to celebrate it. I don’t know why. At times I am too hard on myself and I realise that. But I am unable to stop. Instead of peace, I experience boredom. There’s some interior feeling within me that just doesn’t let me want to stop and take a minute. I’m always thinking about something or the other or analysing some part of my curriculum, things like that.

I think the role models we choose for ourselves reveal a lot about our inner character. All my role models have been ambitious, heartless and powerful (for the better part, fictional) people who weren’t affected by any sort of emotional turbulence. Over time I focused on making myself like them and now here I am.