Dear Seaturtle:

Tomorrow will be the one-year anniversary of your second, 40-page thread (Oct 6, 2023). My first reply to you (on any thread) was a week after, Oct 13 last year. There I quoted you (I will change the boldface part in this post): “I do not know if he loves me for me… what do you love about me specifically apart from others… I don’t feel seen… I am not sure he  sees what makes me special as opposed to another girl… I want him to tell me he loves things about me that make me ME. I want to feel like he sees me… who I truly am… I want to explode and just be like “DO YOU SEE ME“.

I commented on that first reply: “…before reading anything about your childhood and parents, it was clear to me that you grew up UNSEEN… I was one of the loneliest girls on the planet, isolated from the inside.. UNSEEN (with capital letters, as in to the extreme), there was an emptiness within me, a heavy, dark emptiness… The darkness within made me a stranger to myself… What a relief it was/ is, decades later, to start seeing ME.  Interestingly, the more I see, the less my need to be special, unique, as in different or better than others”.

Fast forward almost a year, Sept 28, on this thread (the last date you posted): “What comes to mind now, is that a majorly good person is one with good intentions but doesn’t always get that across… a fully good person is (someone whose) intentions are always pure, never contaminated with bias or selfish wants“.

Back to almost a year ago, you wrote: “My dad would accuse me of planning my showers around avoiding talking to him… he took normal teenage behavior as me not caring for him... he thinks I am selfish and is probably why I have fears of being selfish or narcissistic. It is scary when someone tells you that you are coming across a certain way that is unbeknownst to you, it makes me self conscious about how I do come across, which if I let myself overthink this I become awkward in social situations”.

He accused you of having “bad” intentions, such as the intent to avoid talking to him. He took normal teenage behaviors and accused you of having.. abnormal/ bad intentions behind those normal behaviors. To him, you came across early on, as a selfish person.

Correct me if I am wrong about the following: about some of your behaviors, you know that your intentions were good or pure, or that there was no bad intention behind this or that behavior (past and present), and that therefore, your father was wrong to accuse you of a selfish intent.

But sometimes, you do have selfish intents and sometimes you have negative thoughts and feelings about people (including about me), and it confuses you and disturbs you because you think that your father was right after all.

Problem is that every person sometimes has intentions to benefit oneself, and every person is selfish sometimes. Every person sometimes has negative thoughts and feelings about others. But in your case, any such cognitive incident (selfish intents and thinking/ feeling negatively about a person) is further evidence that your father was right and that therefore, you are- not a normal person who is sometimes selfish etc., – but an abnormal person: a fully selfish, narcissistic person..?

anita

Hi Seaturtle

Please don’t worry! It is lovely to hear from you when you can manage. I understand how hard things are because you are extremely busy with two jobs. Congratulations on your 2nd job by the way. How are you doing? How are you finding it? Please try to prioritize time for taking care of yourself during your non-work hours. Are you tired working so much?

I’m still really busy too with the baby and studying. I passed my course by the way! Onto the next one. My son is teething and almost walking and trying to talk. Still trying to work on the difficulties with my husband. Half of relationships fail after having a new baby. But we are trying our best to get back on track. I think it’s really nice watching my son explore the world for the first time. And it’s really nice to feel a sense of community with other mothers that I meet at baby classes.

The way I think about it is, this place is often where people come when times are hard. I’m happy for you that things are not as hard as they used to be for you.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏