Dear Anita,

Ok, thank you, so I will write in my thread without re-reading if something you said needs a reply 🙂

About the tent: well, some people tell me that i need a house to live in. And I think: i should just tidy it a bit and then it will be much nicer. But, the way I feel it at the moment: the tent makes that i don’t really have a space to live in comfortable, and not a space to hide myself in. And i am so upset these days, so exhausted and emotionally desperate. It might be good this way because it makes it a bit easier to seek or accept support from other people. Because I am crying so much and can’t hide it. Today a nice girl came to me and gave me a hug, and i sat down with her and talked with her for a few moments. That might be much more valuable then having a nice appartment for myself. Ok, if i had an appartment, maybe i had more space to take care of myself more, practise more self-compassion and do things for myself, but now i am actually showing myself in the state that i feel so broken and lost, and accepting their support. That is something new, and might be good. Because i feel most desperate about the huge distance between me and other people.

Today i felt awful, i find it difficult to be with them. I wonder if i am too demanding, if i expect too much from my father. As if the world revolves around me and all the attention needs to go to me. But maybe it is the opposite, i feel that it is so distant and cold, and i find it hard to deal with. I find it hard to get some attention, to be heard and i don’t know if that is normal.
This noon, after having a coffee, i said that i was tired and wanted to go home and rest for an hour. Because i felt so drained from being with them. So that was a good reaction, to take some time for myself and give myself a little bit of space. And this evening, in the restaurant, after we’d finished eating and were just sitting there, nobody saying anything, looking around in silence, i had already gone outside a few times. I said that i wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home. I don’t think it was nice to do, because they still went to the bar without me, but, ok, i found it so hard to deal with the atmosphere there, that i took care of myself. Instead of them.

And to come back to the reason why i started this topic.
Haha, i caught a glimpse of him today, when we were sitting on a terrace and he was walking in our direction (and then crossed the street). And i wished i could just go to him, smile and hug him, and talk with him.
I wonder, what do i feel for him, do i really like him or is it a need, is it an attachment. Or is it projection, because i saw some signals that i interpreted als interest towards me, and because he was so nice towards me, that i started to like him. But that’s not entirely true, he is a very sensitive person, and i can’t remember ever feeling so light and so calm around somebody. That is maybe more valuable than not having had many conversations with him – i have to respect that connection and not playing him down.
I have tried something – maybe clumsy and different than i would have wanted it – to make some contact, without really reply. If i was a different person, with more self-regard, i might do more effort, insisting more. But, i guess i have to respect the huge insecurity about myself, and that i am afraid to impose myself, the feeling that i don’t have anything to offer (even thought it might be untrue, this is how i feel), so i stop making contact. My head is still too busy looking for explanations about what he things about me, that i have messed it up, that he always acted towards me. That is not healthy.

I feel that it is only the past few days that i am a little bit calmer about him. Seeing that missing him and longing for him so much is not going to help at all. That i have to let it go – nice expressiong but how do you do that?
I have asked the universe that i still hope to have some contact, to have the chance to talk about some things with him, or give him a hug like i have wanted for so long. To see him again. But, myself, i will have to focus again on the person that matters the most in my life: myself. I have neglected myself quite a bit, and that is why i am so low now.

My collegue gave me some things, a way of contact, a feeling together, a feeling of being seen, a feeling that i mattered and i can be grateful for that.
And i learned some things from it. I learned, that i need to change the pattern of pushing people away. I am already doing effort to work on it, here with people in the hostel. NOw with the visit of my father, i can see that i reacted towards this guy, in a very similar way as my father does towards me. That is very painful.
And frustrating as well, because i don’t and didn’t want to react like that. I feel i messed it up with him. So i guess, if i try to see it positive, this was a good lesson, to what i want to change in myself. This pushing people away is not only with him of course, but him it was the most painful. I do it also with other people, and that is why i don’t have friends. And now with the visit of my father, it shows me quite clearly why i am so stuck with other people.
So it is probably a good experience, it gives me the opportunity to work on something, something that i really want to change, and the pain is hopefully a good motivation to really do some effort.
And that i need to stop thinking so much, and to feel in the moment. Because that is also what blocked our contact.
Missing him.. Ok that will take some time and i will need to learn to feel those feeling, with the mindfulness practice.
It might be more an image that i was putting about him, than really missing who he is, since i don’t know him.
No, i want to give myself the right to miss somebody instead of downgrading it by analyzing.

I just want to remind myself, that there are more nice people. That it will be possible to meet other men where i feel good with, that he is not the only one. How much that i would have liked to become i bit closer with him (as friends or more), i hope that i will meet other men where i feel good around. To be around him and just being able to relax completely, and being able to think a bit more easily, that was very nice to experience. But it can’t be that he is the only man in the world, where i will feel like that. It will probably be good for me to meet more different people. Now i feel too exhausted to feel anything anymore, expect despair.

But, just like i need to stop longing to get emotional support from my father (which is easier to know mentally than emotionally), i need to stop longing for my ex-colleague (the same between brackets, easy to know with my mind than with my feeling, will come with time). And stop wishing that i was still working there, and being around him. This emotional crisis is probably good, because now i have the chance again, to confront and heal some things inside of myself.

I think i just need a bit of rest, from all these emotions. It’s been a bit too much, the past weeks.

Dear Anita,

Yes, it is probably good for me to live in the tent in the hostel for a while. To have more chance to interact with people and to practice, but also to practice more with taking my own space. Not to feel obliged to interact with people when i don’t feel like it or with people who live here as well. Not to react to what i think are their expectations: if i want to be in my own space, maybe that is good as well.

The fear, yes you have a point there. We survived it many times in the past, and now we are adults, we have more power over ourselves and over the way we view the experience of rejection or being attacked by somebody. We can learn to view it as a reaction of them, not a reality about us. That is something to practice with.

Today i decided to go to my previous workplace, because i still hadn’t received a certain document, and i wanted to ask for the reference. I was afraid to go there and see the people (to see the person who this topic is about), i was afraid to see the boss, and i was afraid to ask for the reference, afraid that they might laugh at me or say no or something (ideas that my fear makes up in my head and that i consider then as reality). There are 3 bosses, and i thought that the female one was the most reliable, the 2 men might be more likely to forget. And i know that she usually works on Wednesday. She is also the one that i was most scared of, because she yelled at me when i gave my notice. So when i was considering, should i go today or tomorrow, i realised: i am so scared of her, it is better to go today to see her, to deal with my fear.
To make it harder, when i was walking towards there, telling myself that today i will finally go, the car of this colleague just past me. I only saw his numberplate, didn’t dare to raise my hand or smile. So that made my heartbeat already go up like crazy. I was sitting in the park for on hour, observing the fear in my body, how my heart was getting crazy, how my limbs were heavy and tensed… Then i decided to just go, even with my fear, i saw her, went to talk to her, and she explained me why she doesn’t have the document. Then i asked her for a reference and she answered vaguely that it is ok. So it wasn’t bad or terrible at all. I find these kind of experiences very demanding, later i got back in the hostel and people were probably trying to be nice and i got back into paranoidness. But i hope, by doing more of these things, the fear might get lower or i might get more in control of it. It feels more liberating to feel the fear and not pushing it away. I guess this was a good example how the fear was there, probably originated from my childhood and then being fed for so many years by my own way of thinking, and how i can choose to allow the fear and do what i want to do anyway. I don’t want to let myself be restricted by my fear anymore.

And i’d still like to come back to the original title of my topic. I feel so bad about ignoring him so often, keeping away, looking away from him. I just read an other post here, where the person was angry about a girl treating him like that, and i realise: i have done that a lot to him as well, while he has been very nice and attentive. I guess that it is best to give up my expectations, or hopes for further contact in any way, and let him go, don’t try to mess with him anymore if it so difficult for me to respond to contact. But, some people have told me the past days: we have to forgive ourself. Maybe that is what i need to do in this situation, forgive myself for hurting myself and for pushing him away. Understand myself and be compassionate. I know that it is extremely hard for me and that i am not used to this, and that i just didn’t know how to respond. That i tried to change this pattern in my clumsy way and that it often didn’t work like i wanted to. The main thing is that i can learn something out of it. I need to be nicer with myself, spend more energy on self-care, and be more aware of how i feel around people – especially nice people because then is when the fear and the pushing away are the most strongest. But it is hard, because when the ‘danger’ of having somebody nice come closer, is the greatest, then my fear gets so overwhelming that it plays tricks with my mind. I seem to be putting myself in some kind of a psychosis, of a trance, and it is hard to see reality. For the whole year that i worked there, i was trying to fight thoughts that everybody there thinks i’m a stupid thing and too much – of course i was glad to leave when i got the chance. But the thing is, people probably didn’t think like that, but these ideas get so persistent in my head, because it is a situation where i see people daily, so getting quite close.
Maybe the next time i will recognise easier if somebody is real and nice, and maybe i will manage to respond a bit better. In any case, i have learned to see something from this, to identify a certain pattern that is very strong, and that is probably valuable. I still hope that, if i do decide to leave this town, that i get to see him before i leave, talk with him, say some things, look him in the eyes and be honest. But i don’t know if that might happen. And he might not even be interested at all in talking with me anymore. But i want to be nice to myself and know that i am not perfect, nor supposed to be, and that i need to give myself time to learn these things, they are not easy, and certainly not for somebody who is used to so much rejection and being ignored – first by my parents, then even much more, by myself.

Well, it is easy to say, forgive myself, but i find it difficult. Difficult to let go of the regret that i didn’t do it differently, difficult to think that i acted in an annoying way towards him. I guess that is where many of my problems originate: attachment. To emotions, to thoughts, to the past, to people, to ideas… Maybe that is because of fear, fear of being in myself and in my own power. I don’t know.

Dear Anita,

Thank you so much for your kind words.
I was actually already thinking how emberassed I am to write all my stuff here on the internet, and that i wanted to try to delete the whole thing. And your words encourage me to keep writing here.
I was just writing a long reply to you, but i don’t know if i feel very comfortable with writing such a personal things on the internet. At the same time, i would like to keep writing with you, because I find it very interesting and helpful. And I don’t know if anybody else beside me or you is reading this. So i was wondering if you would like to communicate further in an other way. I don’t think there is an option here to exchange personal messages, so i don’t know what you think about that?

I keep my reply for now in an offline document, and i think i might need some time to reflect on your question about the last part anyway.