in the space between the lovers, we are forced to face ourselves

“I feel lonely and sad. I want love. I want to see [the crush]. And at the same time I want to not want love. I want to feel free. I am really unsure whether the best thing is to allow myself to desire love (because otherwise I would be denying myself my desires) or to let go because this desire is causing me suffering. I also don’t know how to let go. How do you let go [of] something you’ve desired for half of your life? I remember vividly being a teenager and saying how no one loved me and being told that someday I will meet someone who will love me. I didn’t need to meet someone. I needed to feel loved by my parents, but I did not understand that and neither did they. And he never came. No one came to love me the way I needed to be loved.”

From My Journal, Day 154

I swung like a pendulum between aching for love and longing to be free from my desire. I was terrified by not knowing when love would come, when I would be held and kissed again. I was gasping to feel someone else’s presence. And I was desperate to escape emptiness and pain amplified by their absence.  

In the space between the lovers, I was forced to face my own choices and how I truly felt about them. I could no longer pretend that I was excited about schoolwork and cared to pursue the goals I set for myself. I could no longer ignore the dysfunction permeating all my friendships and other platonic relationships, and the anxiety stirred by their proximity. I could no longer affirm that I was happy with the life I built and liked the person I had become.

The future did not inspire me. It frightened me. I felt ungrounded, helpless and scared. I had been here before. I was a teenager at the time. My world was turned upside down, and for the first time in my life I was confronted with the ugly side of humanity. My entire belief system collapsed. I lost faith in God, and I ceased to trust people. Disillusioned and guarded, I built walls around me, and within my psychological confinement I plunged deep into depression. It was the closest I ever came to committing suicide, but I was paralyzed by pain and fear. I had no financial and cognitive resources due to my young age, and I had no one to turn to for help. Thus, I doubled down on my defenses, and the need to prove, protect and provide for myself. It took me almost a decade to fully recover from depressive episodes, but I did not restore my faith, and I did not allow myself to be in a position wherein I depended on someone else for safety and livelihood again.     

Some years and several avoidant relationships later, I found myself lying on a couch and crying in despair because there was nothing left for me to grasp onto. Life as I knew it was falling apart before my very eyes. The person I thought myself to be - the persona I constructed to protect and provide for myself, and exclusively relied on for many years - was disintegrating. Aside from the breakup, there were not many changes or challenges in my objective reality. It was all yet to come. But the veil I perceived said reality through was violently ripped off my face and I could no longer lie to myself.

I knew I needed to let go of my self-imposed goals, skin-deep trauma-bonded friendships, and artificial ideas of my ideal desired self. I could see none of it was working. But my ego resisted. I was afraid that without anything concrete to tie my identity to I would wonder and drift like a bum. I believed that without any external goals to attach my worth to I was unworthy. On the surface, I felt I needed to be esteemed in the eyes of society, and have purpose and direction in my life. Underneath it all, however, - beneath everything I thought would make me a complete fulfilled individual - there was a need to protect myself. But my defense mechanisms were failing me. It was time to surrender my armor. It was time to take the walls down. Without bringing it to my conscious awareness, I felt it was time to demolish my belief system once again, now intentionally and on my terms.   

I cried on the phone with my mother for hours lamenting that I did not know what to do. I am grateful to her for staying with my hysteria during those times, but I am glad I did not heed any of her advice about alternative means to establish myself in my professional life and settle down in my personal life. She wanted me to be happy, and like myself she confounded happiness with certainty. She believed I needed to keep trying – to apply to a different graduate program, meet other men, and get new hobbies. But I had done it before. In my early twenties, in the midst of depression and its accompanying darkness, disenchanted and distrustful, I drew a map of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to become, and I remained faithful to that path – the very same path which led me to the wreckage I was facing now. My life came full circle. Except this time around life did not strike. Disappointed with my choices, I took a sledgehammer into my own hands.  

My resistance to taking action - my not knowing what to do - was the answer I needed. I needed to accept not knowing. I needed to stay with the uncertainty. I needed to do nothing. It was the wisest choice, and the most difficult one. Uncertainty about the future felt more intolerable than the pain of the past. Uncertainty was more exasperating than the daily frustrations of my academic life, more unsettling than the anticipated deceit in my friendships, and more heart-wrenching than the accustomed letdowns in my romantic relationships. There was no excitement about new adventures and endless possibilities, which are ubiquitously advertised by social media. There was dread. Afraid of flying into the unknown, I would had rather drowned by anchoring myself to the known misery of the past.   

Fear of the unknown was the reason I clung to the crush. Surely, I did not know the crush, but I became intimate with my fantasy about him. I also had full control over the fantasy. I did not want to face uncertainty. I did not want to face the fact that I was dissatisfied with my degree, that I was alone and I had to bear the responsibility for my choices alone, that my relational needs were not met, and I had no clue when I would find the one and when I would be held and kissed again. I so desperately wanted to be held and kissed.

I still latched onto the fantasy of the one – the one who would relieve my burden of braving the world and spare me the need to address my own inadequacies by making up for my shortcomings with his strengths, the one who would save me from me. Like a child who fell and bruised her knees, I wanted to be held in safety and comfort, and have all my sorrows kissed away. But I was no longer a child. I was a woman. I was a grown woman who had just dived into the abyss of childhood trauma, painful memories, unconscious ego-driven choices, limiting beliefs, and torturous awareness of it all. I was embraced by my shadow, and it held me tightly in its grip.

the mind cannot see what it cannot accept

“The very thought of [them] makes me depressed; it makes me feel helpless and abused and targeted. This feeling is all too familiar for me […] I felt the same way about some of my friends in the past. It makes me feel very uneasy. And it has a very strong hold over me. It gives me anxiety.”

From My Journal, Day 81

I often felt crippling anxiety around friends and acquaintances. I stayed up at night ruminating on my interactions with them. I was overcome by strong emotions, i.e., fear and dread, shame and guilt. My thoughts were racing. I felt restless and uneasy.

Many said I was overthinking. I was too sensitive. It was all in my head. I needed to let it go and take it easy, or see a therapist or psychiatrist about it.

In the presence of others, I unconsciously resorted to people pleasing or bullying. I made myself small by self-deprecating and playing a victim, or I made myself big by being loud and aggressive. I talked incessantly. I dominated every conversation I was in. I constantly drew attention and roused laughter. I was much like a circus animal performing tricks on stage to entertain and satiate emotional hunger of my spectators. Except those were not tricks. They were often real stories about my painful and lonely existence that some seemed to enjoy hearing about and others were too timid to walk away from.

I was so caught up in the day-to-day drama, I was not able to see clearly. I continually went in and out of the state of awareness, which was accompanied (or perhaps triggered) by repeated spikes in stress hormones followed by inevitable physiological crashes. My body and mind were in a perpetual cycle of intoxication and exhaustion. However, I was not influenced by drugs or alcohol, I was influenced by other people. My judgement was clouded by persistent strong emotional reactions. My thoughts were entangled in lies and manipulations and projections. I was confused. I felt I was crazy. I felt I could not trust myself. I could not understand whether I was right or wrong, fair or biased, imposing or gaslit. I was enmeshed. I could not see myself separate from another.

It was not until I temporarily isolated myself that the fog began to clear. I needed to distance myself physically from these interactions for some time to regain autonomy over my emotional and mental states, and see the situation for what it was. And although, I could now see the enmeshed, codependent, toxic (as in inflicting real measurable harm on my mental, emotional and physical bodies) and otherwise unhealthy nature of these relationships, I did not see a way out. I was afraid of retaliation, harassment and overt aggression. Afterall, there was a reason I made myself small or big, and I enmeshed - I was protecting myself. There was wisdom in my dysfunction.

These seemingly maladaptive responses to social situations have some interesting parallels with self-defense strategies we are taught when encountering a bear in the wild. I am no hunter, or hiker, or nature enthusiast, but I believe the advice goes along the lines of “If it’s brown, lie down, if it’s black, attack.” In other words, we are told to protect ourselves by making ourselves small in the presence of some bears, and big in response to others. Although there were no bears or lions or wolves in my vicinity, there were people in my life who had no reservations about lying, manipulating, bad-mouthing and distorting the narrative in any other way possible. My unhealthy excessive worry and rumination were in fact a healthy response to an unhealthy environment. My incessant chattering distracted and lulled the scheming minds of others. By enmeshing, I made myself close and similar and, therefore, unthreatening. My nervous system was signaling to flee, but without any escape route in sight, I only edged nearer.   

I did get out eventually. I was betrayed, and then I was discarded. Although a part of me saw it coming and was relieved, it still hurt. I still had a hard time believing and accepting it. And I was enraged. I punched and threw pillows in my bedroom. I cried and screamed (alone in the privacy of my home because society condemns justified anger expressed in response to unjust offenses). And I wrote about some really disturbing violent fantasies in a journal as a way to channel my anger onto paper rather than people. I was quite surprised by how gruesome those images were, and how satisfying it felt to entertain them in my mind. I did not know I was prone to at the very least thinking of such violence. In truth, we are all capable of violence just as much as we are capable of love. We are all criminals, and we are saints. We are all oppressors and saviors. It is not the question of if someone can be violent, but rather it is the question of what it takes them to get there.

Betrayal may have saved me from my entanglements this time, but it did not save me from me. I was still attracted to dysfunctional relationships like a moth to a flame, and I continued to engage in the dance of accommodating and intimidating within those relationships. These were my coping mechanisms, and although it may seem logical to address unhealthy adaptive behaviors directly and attempt to change them – to trade people pleasing for authenticity and self-expression, to replace aggression with compassion and understanding, to train one’s mind to be present and the body to stay calm – the unconscious simply will not allow it. There is danger in being authentic around liars and compassionate around manipulators. There is foolishness in staying put and calm when the body alerts to run. There is no use in setting boundaries where none are respected (more on that later).

What I needed was discernment, and then acceptance. There is already wisdom innate to all of us which guides us through the realities of life, if only one can adequately perceive them. I needed to see people for who they actually were rather than who I hoped they would be. I needed to put an end to rationalizing and emphasizing with their red flags. I needed to stop assuming responsibility for their behavior. I needed to face the darkness in others rather than glossing over it to fit the narrative I was projecting.  

And in order to recognize the monsters around me, I first needed to witness the demons within me.   

happiness is an obstacle to wholeness

“I don’t know how to be happy alone. I have fantasized about being in love. I have chased after men I thought I was in love with. I have had sex with men I hoped would love me. I dated men I thought loved me. Tonight I am alone. No one to talk to. No one to hold me. No one to confide in. No one to understand. Just a glass of wine. Or two. Third one actually. […] How do I learn to be happy alone? How do I wake up in the morning and look forward to the day when there is no one to look forward to seeing or speaking to?”

From My Journal, Day 80

I had actively searched for and chased after love for more than a decade. Despite my relentless efforts, and despite being fairly attractive and interesting (according to others’ opinions), I found myself alone, incapable of tolerating my aloneness sober, and not knowing what to do about it.   

All I had were emotional bruises and scars from dysfunctional relationships and failed attempts at relationships. Clearly, what I had been doing - what I was taught and encouraged to do - was not working. I was at a loss, and the Internet, and expensive self-help courses, and friends, and family, and therapy were not helping. It seemed everyone and everything encouraged me to get out there, to be positive, to be open, to be social, and to build friendships, hobbies, career, finances, muscles, and find a romantic relationship in the process, or to sign up for a dating service and sift through hundreds of men until I find someone who sort of fits (if I polish and lubricate my edges). But I no longer believed in any of that advice, and I did not trust myself.   

I did not trust that I could make a healthy choice. I asked myself in one of my journal entries, “How do I get my life to a place where I am not at risk of settling?” It is necessary to clarify that by “settling” I meant willingly chaining myself to a man who was unsafe – who did not respect and accept me – just so I could feel the validation of having someone by my side or rather being by someone else’s side. At the time, I did not know what it actually meant to feel enough, what it meant to love myself, and what it meant to respect and accept myself. I did not know how to go about it and where to start. All I knew was that I wanted to be able to sit across a table from a man and see him exactly for who he was, and accept or reject him based on that knowing. It sounds rather simple. How else would anyone do it?

The truth is most of us do not see our lovers, nor do we see ourselves. We are unconsciously attracted to the likes of people who hurt us (more often than not a parent we have a more complicated relationship with), and we project a fantasy of what we want to see, which is changed behavior on behalf of said parent, onto a significant other. We form trauma bonds and we call it love, and we get defensive whenever our fantasy attachment is threatened by the slightest hint of reality.   

Although it became evident to me (after many years of disappointment) that no one was coming to rescue me, I still searched for saving someplace else. I believed I would no longer be at risk of settling for the next man to come along if I derived love and fulfillment from within, if I was happy with myself and I was happy with my life, and I was at peace, present and able to enjoy the moment. I placed a lot of emphasis on filling my cup, building myself up, feeling confident and worthy, and finding fulfillment in my work and love in self-care. Whereas previously I looked for happiness, love and fulfillment in a romantic relationship, I now earnestly hoped I could find it all in the life I thought I was building.  

I naively trusted that as long as life was good, I could make good choices.  

I believed I would not be at risk of settling if I was healed. I presumed I could undo the effects of trauma and rid myself of pain if I connected with my inner child, and embraced her with love and tenderness, and provided her support and protection that she lacked. Whereas before I projected an image of a parent onto my partner, I now assumed responsibility of said parental figure, and expected I could heal all my wounds, meet all my needs, and free myself from all my aching desires, and at last make it all OK.

In reality, I needed to accept that it is never all OK, that there are always unmet needs and unfulfilled desires, wounds that ache from time to time, and scars that are distasteful to the eye. I needed to accept that there is no absolute healing or forgetting, that there is always a void, and that sometimes it feels uncomfortable. I needed to accept that there is no parental figure to make it all OK – not a father, not a mother, not a mentor, not a lover, not God, not myself – and there never was, and that is OK.

The truth is it takes years to get to a place where one is not at risk of settling, and that place is not some fairytale land where we are miraculously filled with and healed by love for all, and we become one with everything. It is not a place where we gain superhuman abilities to meet all our needs and free ourselves from all our desires. It is also not a place of intoxicating success in finances, career and business, and unworldly perfection in art and beauty, which take us even further away from reality. Rather, it is a sobering grounding place where we can see our unhealed wounds and unmet needs and aching desires with acceptance. We are not at risk of settling when we are able to tolerate the perceived lack rather than deny it. Only when we can see the void and accept the void without attempting to fill the void, can we have the discernment and wisdom not to settle.  

This knowing is not something that can be taught. It is not enough to recognize it on an intellectual level. It must be experienced. It must be felt rather than conceptualized. It must be trained and built over time and with repetition like a muscle. It is something we simply arrive at after years of daily practice, during which we learn to spend evenings in our own company, to lull ourselves to sleep and greet the morning in solitude and without desperation, to witness our demons without pushing them away, to talk about painful memories without losing ourselves to anger and grief, and to hold space for hope and desire without the urgency, and entitlement, and helplessness of a child.    

I did not need to learn to be happy alone. I needed to become stronger – strong enough to observe reality as it is and see people as they are, strong enough to endure without the compulsive need to numb myself with substances or escape myself by forging fantasy bonds.

For the time being, however, I continued to drink wine and envy those who still managed to get away with unconscious relationships.

sometimes withdrawal feels like affection

“I am obsessed. I am obsessed with a person I don’t even know. […] I created fake Instagram account and Facebook account just to stalk him. I know way too much about him to ever confidently look into his eyes. I crave him so bad. I am so out of control that I continue to get drunk on wine. I’ve been ordering unhealthy takeout, and [… I walked to a convenience store] and got cigarettes because I needed to subside my obsession somehow. I haven’t smoked in a long time.”

From My Journal, Day 109

I was awakened from my daydreaming by a visceral sexual attraction.

I remember sitting several rows behind him and looking at his wide neck and shoulders. There was something primal about his build. His broad muscular frame inspired an image of a caveman, a hunter, a protector. There was something animalistic about my attraction to him. I felt it deep in my bones. My body ached for him.

The attraction was mutual. I saw it in his eyes. But neither of us initiated a conversation. I frequently ran into him, and when I did I froze like a deer in headlights.

I felt extremely anxious. Perhaps, I sensed he was not a safe man. Perhaps, it was due to my learned association between intimacy and danger, which was strongly reinforced by a lifetime of disappointments, pain and trauma. I can say with certainty, however, that we were both emotionally unavailable.

Instead of acting on my feelings and approaching him, I let the quite natural attraction grow into an unnatural obsession. I searched for him everywhere I went. I created fake social media accounts to stalk his. I talked about him incessantly, and when I was not talking or stalking, I was fantasizing.

I craved him, although I did not know him. I had never heard his voice, felt his touch, smelled or tasted him. Yet, I craved him. It was all a figment of my imagination. I quenched my cravings with wine and unhealthy takeout. And it is no coincidence that some years after quitting smoking, I once again lit up a cigarette, which then led to more cravings and another obsession.

I smoked cigarettes when I was younger. I hated it. I hated the smell of it. I hated the taste of it. I hated how it instantly made me fatigued and anxious. I was filled with hatred towards the habit and shame about myself. Yet, I vividly remember feeling that nothing could compare to the high of nicotine. Nothing felt enjoyable without a cigarette. Life felt empty. I attempted to quit many times and, like many, failed. And I remember thinking that I would be able to quit smoking if only I had a boyfriend. I figured I could fill the void with another person. Afterall, is it not what we all do? Do we not, consciously and unconsciously, fill the voids in our lives and our hearts with people around us?

I did quit smoking eventually. That was a year or so into my relationship. I replaced the habit of smoking with a relationship and a new obsession, I mean hobby, which was running. Nicotine, sex, love and running have more in common than it appears – all four induce a strong intoxicating physiological response in a relatively short timeframe.  

One may argue that unlike cigarettes, sex, relationships and exercise are healthy. Relationships and fitness, as well as nutrition, are not only some of the most common objects of obsession, but also widely celebrated and encouraged sources of mental preoccupation, distraction, avoidance and addiction. It is what nature intended afterall – to encourage us to sleep, eat, move and fornicate. These rather natural activities flood our brain receptors with feel-good chemicals to ensure our genes are passed on.

The cultural fixation on relational and physical health also gives us an illusion of control. On some level, we believe that by managing our relationships we can avoid facing ourselves and evade confronting our own inadequacies. We believe that by sculpting our body we can shape the perceptions of others. We believe that by subscribing to a rigid diet or sleep regimen or a ritual of activities with questionable practical utility, we can outsmart aging and death. Or we simply distract ourselves. I was most strict with my diet during the months leading up to the breakup. It was much easier to cry over the fact that I could not have cake than admit that there was no sweetness in my relationship.

Nonetheless, I found myself single again. I was lonely. I was injured from running. And I was smoking.

At last, I came face to face with my inner monsters. Now that I was no longer channeling my compulsive, obsessive and addictive tendencies into more socially acceptable pursuits, i.e., a relationship and healthy lifestyle habits, my dysfunctional patterns became so evident I could no longer ignore them… or blame someone else for them.  

In truth, the crush was not an object of my affection. The crush was a trigger. The crush was not a source of my overwhelmingly strong feelings, cravings and aching. I was.

As usual, I was chasing the high. I wanted to feel good. I needed to fill the void. I never felt wholly safe and at peace in the presence of another person to begin with, and I most certainly was not able to let anyone near me (and rightfully so) shortly after the breakup. Thus, the obsession with a person I had not as much as spoken to served as a surrogate for connection, affection and intimacy. And when that was not enough, I turned to nicotine.  

My nervous system was highly dysregulated. The pain of being alone, and the even greater pain of now beginning to see my past relationships more clearly compounded with adverse effects of my bad habits took me on a wild emotional rollercoaster ride.

I did not know the skills to ground and soothe myself. I did not have the strength to hold space for my inner experiences. It was unbearable to drop into the present moment and stay there. Awareness overwhelmed and sickened me. So, I resorted to stalking, drinking and smoking in an attempt to numb and escape from my pain.

One may wonder why I did not ask for help. In therapy, I was encouraged to seek healing in relationships that were dysfunctional. I wasted hundreds of dollars on self-help courses that promised the healing power of self-love in as little as thirty days. Some close to me reveled in my unraveling and further fueled my obsession with the crush, and others simply were not strong enough to witness and be present with my pain.

I did ask for help. And in the process, I was misled, I was deceived, and my experiences were – mostly unintentionally – invalidated.

It is challenging to find healing in a sick society. It is nearly impossible to be seen by those who are too afraid to see themselves.

Thus, without anyone to rescue me from myself, I plunged deep into the rabbit hole of compulsion, obsession, and addiction.

there is more truth in fantasy than reality

“I slept in today. And I really needed that. But then I spent all day daydreaming and being on my phone, and boy do I feel shitty right now. I am restless. And angry at [the ex]. And I feel like I’ve been neglecting myself all day.”

From My Journal, Day 64

When I failed to feel positive, I daydreamed. In fact, I daydreamed most of my time outside the office and classroom.

Daydreaming was my primary coping mechanism since early childhood. Having no influence over my external conditions, I habitually retreated into my internal, more accurately mental, experiences. My rich imagination was my refuge. I spent much of my life in this disassociated state. I believe it was my daydreaming habit that enabled me to preserve my child-like curiosity and openness, idealism and softheartedness. By escaping the present moment, I evaded its blows. By disconnecting from my sensitivity and receptivity, intuition and creativity, I saved myself from the harsh elements of life. By separating from my truth, I remained true to myself.

A friend asked me once how I resisted submitting to my circumstances and changing – hardening – as a result. The fact is I fragmented my psyche and hid various parts of my self in the shadow. One cannot manipulate that which is not accessible.  

The only place I could see a glimpse of what was desirable and dear to my heart was in my daydreams.

During those early days post breakup, I felt much resistance to facing reality and instead spent countless hours daydreaming about a different version of me in different circumstances surrounded by different, that is loving and supportive, people. I daydreamed about the self I hoped to become someday and the life I hoped to live someday years down the line. I always measured the time gap between my current self (at any given moment) and fantasy self in years because, although I intended to become that person, I knew the transformation was so dramatic it would require heaps of time and effort to change the ingrained patterns of being and behaving. Yet, the person I saw in my daydreams felt more like self than the person perpetually riding an emotional roller coaster, relentlessly obsessing over relationships, bulldozing through (repeat) situations with tunnel vision, and inflating herself with empty cheer.  

As a result of my compulsive and excessive daydreaming, I procrastinated on schoolwork, which piled up and increasingly added to my stress load, that I then attempted to escape by more daydreaming. I neglected my body and home. My sink was full of dishes, my sheets needed changing, and my legs were overdue for a shave. I felt disgusted and annoyed and angry. I was mostly angry at my ex. I felt restless. I was alone. I was lonely. I was experiencing a lot of fear and anxiety related to school, which I harbored for decades as a consequence of being in an abusive educational system, wherein unfulfilled educators dumped their frustrations onto and exercised their limited power over powerless children. These emotional wounds were once again peeled open by an ongoing unhealthy power dynamic I observed in a university.

In essence, my reality was too painful, and I was too weak to endure the pain.  

More than anything, I wanted two things in life: to love what I did and to love the person I was with. And no matter where I was in life, what my influences were and how much personal work I did or avoided doing, this simple truth did not change. And if there was anything more excruciating than the circumstances I found myself in, it was the realization that I never had the experiences I so deeply longed for and they continued to be out of my reach. Thus, I daydreamed.

I argue that daydreaming is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms I developed. The danger of daydreaming is that it can become obsessive and take over one’s life. It can steal many, if not most, hours from anyone’s day, if not checked, similar to an addiction to Internet, TV, gaming, and in some cases reading. Unlike the latter, however, daydreaming is more challenging to unplug from because, plainly, it does not run on electricity (even reading requires a light source). And, of course, it makes paying attention in important situations, i.e., driving, conversations, classroom, etc., far more difficult.

The major advantage of daydreaming, however, is that it allows one to explore their deepest desires without inhibition, whilst remaining crystal clear about what is fantasy and what is reality. The fantasy I played out in my head while laying on a couch and staring at a ceiling posed much less threat to my psychological development and quality of life than the fantasy I lived out when I fanatically convinced myself that I was happy, and grateful, and blessed, and life was good. The imaginary relationships I created in my mind were far less of an obstacle to achieving true intimacy than the real-life relationships I entertained for decades, which were shallow, inauthentic and manipulative. My fictional love served both as an escape and encouragement to believe that safe and profound intimacy was attainable (if I faced my fears, limiting beliefs and unhealthy patterns of feeling, thinking and doing, and learned to take responsibility for myself rather than project an image of a parental figure onto a partner). The fantasy bonds I forged in reality, on the other hand, numbed my senses, diluted my passions, and misled me into thinking that now that I was chosen and I had a warm body by my side, I was validated and complete. They stunted my growth and made me more delusional than any couch fantasy ever could.  

My daydreams were a gateway to my shadow self. They stored the fragmented parts of me – my unmet needs and dormant desires, my neglected talents and undeveloped passions, my large ambitions and even larger personality (which I worked so hard to squeeze into a size zero bodycon dress and adorn with a smile). They pointed in the direction of my fulfillment, which ran opposite of my codependent attachments, avoidant tendencies and compulsive obsessions. They laid out a path to my self-actualization and individuation.

My daydreams were a portal to my potential. They revealed the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be, and guided me towards filling said gap. They informed me which habits I needed to break and which habits I needed to form. They demonstrated the qualities I was lacking. They unmasked my resistance, be it doubts, fears, limiting beliefs, and my conditioning for comfort, complacency and codependence. By sheer imagination, I could sense which relationship dynamics and financial pursuits made me feel empowered, and which made me desire to be small. Interestingly, I always daydreamed about the former, but perpetually leaned towards the latter in real life. For, it is easier to be small, and quiet, and invisible, to be absolved of responsibility and told what to do and what to become, to be protected and secure within the confines of prison walls. In my fantasy, I could see beyond the razor barbed wire fence of my conditioning.  

In my daydreams, I could see the truth.  

positivity is a tool for self-deception

“I handled the day and my emotions well. I can feel the shift in my personal growth. I am slowly becoming the person I want to be. And I like it. I feel like I am more open to life, a little less fearful and a little more confident. I am excited for spring and I am eager to continue working on myself. I like who I am. I like who I am becoming. I feel inspired.”

From My Journal, Day 70

I was lying to myself in almost every journal entry. I told myself I enjoyed conversations which I did not. I told myself I was passionate about schoolwork, which I was not. I told myself life was good, which it was not.

I tried to show up as “my desired self” everyday instead of observing, accepting and simply being with the self that I was, the self that needed me.

I told myself that “my desired self [was] passionate about what she [did], and she [was] great at what she [did].” I heard somewhere online that passion grows with skill. So, I did my best to become good at whatever it was I was doing (and expected to do) at the moment, and to see the positive in it. I employed all my willpower and discipline to stay focused, aware and in the present moment. I eliminated distractions, set a timer and concentrated my mind. In fact, I was so zoomed in on the present moment that I missed the bigger picture. Fixing my attention on a task, circumstance or a person in front of me served as a distraction. It was even therapeutic. It was as remedial as a painkiller in case of a chronic migraine. It may relieve the pain but it does not change the fact that our lifestyle choices, or our environment, or a person, or an underlying health condition is causing a recurring migraine.

I often had the experience of losing myself in a conversation or my work, when I would not notice time go by. I believed I was achieving the state of flow. I convinced myself these moments of oblivion were indicative of my interest and passion. In reality, I mobilized all my faculties and became hyper focused in the face of perceived stress. When chased by a wild animal, we are also present and absorbed in the moment, but the biochemical pathways we activate are very different from those when in the state of flow.

I felt proud of myself. I felt gratified for pushing and persevering at becoming the person I (thought I) desired to be, or rather acting like that person (for short stretches of time because this charade was not sustainable). I was intentional about my time and behavior. More accurately, I attempted to curate my self-expression and the state of being to shape myself into the person I wanted to be. I remained mindful of my thoughts and feelings throughout the day, and the story I told myself. And I played tricks on my mind to change the story. I even believed I was enjoying myself. I fancied that my experiences – my physical environment, schoolwork, interests and social interactions – were enriching me. I felt happy. I felt I was becoming open to love, light and life.

When, in fact, my heart was encrusted with thick bark and overgrown with dense thorny shrubbery.

I was dishonest with myself and disingenuous with others. I was avoiding my inner experiences and escaping my outer reality.

I was discrediting my pain. I was disrespecting my actual thoughts and feelings, and disregarding my natural limitations. I was ignoring the reality that I was surrounded by people who were harming me. I was discounting the truth that I dreaded the work I signed myself up for at school. I was glossing over the fact that I constantly got distracted, and I talked incessantly because for as long as I was talking, I was not listening and paying attention. And it was all for the sake of feeling good.

Since it was too painful to be with the current self and in the current circumstances, I neglected myself in an effort to become someone else. Except this time around, it was not to please others by meeting their expectations of me, it was to distract myself by aspiring to some social media inspired artificially manufactured ideal of self. Working on myself was the means to bypass the acknowledgment of who I really was and how I really felt about the life I created. If I was a different person, and I had a different life, I would not have to look at the truth, let alone accept it.

In essence, I abandoned myself.

My life was a show, and the self I presented was a mimic. I simply was not there.

The messages of positivity and gratitude have saturated our culture. They are propagated by social media and western spirituality. There is this idea that we attract the energy we exude. Whether we call it by its spiritual name, i.e., the Law of Attraction, or refer to it by the term rooted in sociology and psychology, i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy, there is indeed some truth to this phenomenon. However, the key is that the point of attraction lies in our unconscious rather than our conscious. It is our beliefs which are unspoken and, often, unthought of, and behavioral patterns which are rarely perceived by the conscious mind, that selectively color our subjective and, to a degree, objective realities. Therefore, it is of little to no significance what we tell ourselves and others, what we write in our journals, proclaim on social media feeds and pin on our vision boards, and how hard we try to make ourselves feel a certain way. The forces that paint our fate will elude our conscious mind for as long as we turn a blind eye to what is for the sake of that which we want to see.

Whereas some encourage us to gloss over our reality, others teach us to merely cope with its symptoms. Although, the field of psychology is broad and sometimes contradictory, its most popular and palatable to the masses ideas, the kind we are most often imparted while sitting on a therapist’s couch, aim but to help us get by. That is until the next appointment. For example, challenging our thinking and reframing our perspective are valuable tools, which most certainly belong in a toolkit of any intelligent individual, but there is a fine line between being an objective critical thinker who is able to entertain multiple viewpoints and gaslighting ourselves. Similarly, emotional regulation is critical to our wellbeing and that of everyone around us, but when it is exercised in contrary to our inner and outer realities, it is but means to tranquilize and domesticate ourselves. Modern psychotherapy prescribes tools and pills that assist us in adapting to and managing our circumstances, our relationships, and our own body and mind to ensure we do not ruffle others’ feathers too much and fit into our societal structures just enough to survive and procreate.

And, of course, our friends and family want us to be cheerful and hopeful. They just love seeing us happy. Our smiles put smiles on their faces. Our joy warms their hearts. Our laughter tickles their tenderness. Our grit inspires their strength. Our faith gives them hope. Our positivity is convenient. Our brightness saves their energy. Our serenity lulls their distress. Our optimism excuses them from thinking. Our fortitude makes everybody else’s life easier. The truth is that our less than pleasant demeanor irritates the senses of those around us. More often than not our reality is bothersome, distasteful, troubling and threatening to the unsettled souls in our lives. We avoid our reality and we encourage others to do so. We are conditioned to separate ourselves, more accurately our ego, from our essence – sometimes exuberant and blissful, other times animalistic and sexual, and on occasion dark and violent – and we condition the next generations to follow suit.

It is but weak leading the weak.

Too afraid of truth, we build our lives on lies. In an attempt to feel good, we deplete ourselves of all that is good. We live the life of inauthenticity.

This is how I got in my way of co-creating the life that actually fulfilled me. And in order to end this sabotage, my stories, defenses and pretenses had to fail me.

I needed to fall apart.

achievement and productivity are rooted in survival

“I am the woman I want to be. […] At this time I don’t need to go out of my way to seek out new opportunities. I can focus on what I have, appreciate it and do my best at it – do my best at work and do my best at school and do my best (taking care of myself) at home (the home that I love) and see what opportunities come my way.”

From My Journal, Day 35

The foundation I had built my entire life on cracked, and I was in denial about it. Moreover, I was adamant about pushing forward and building on top of a fractured base.

Instead of allowing myself to process the end of a relationship, I was concentrated intently on achievement and productivity. I had a full-time job, and I was studying in school.

My goals were to maintain a 4.0 GPA and do research in school, and get promoted at work – all at the same time. As I wrote in my journal, I wanted to “be so good at what I [did] others [talked] about it.”

If that was not enough to distract myself with, I was fixated on following healthy lifestyle habits, which included regular sleep, clean diet, hydration, running, strength training and yoga, meditation, reading and journaling, everyday chores, and extensive daily and weekly self-care regimens. Brainwashed by social media, I wanted to be “that girl.” I strived to embody an image of a girl who, citing my journal, had “a beautiful white smile,” “supple clear skin,” and “a fit body;” who “[looked] well-groomed at all times and [felt] confident about it.” I wanted to be an epitome of perfect health – inside and out. I wanted a glow up.

None of these habits were new to me. In fact, I invested a lot of effort into establishing some of them in the years prior. They brought value to my life, and I follow many of them today. I say many but not all because combined all these practices make for a very busy schedule. Individually, they may facilitate physical and mental health, but when piled on top of each other they leave no room to think and feel, rest and recover, shed and rejuvenate, and simply allow my emotional body, my lungs and my skin to breathe. For, if there is anything more vital to health than doing, it is non-doing.

Thus, in a persistent attempt to be healthy, I was neglecting my health. Furthermore, I was ignoring the urgent wounds I immanently suffered from the breakup.

It was as if I had broken a leg, and I insisted on continuing to run. In fact, training for a 20-mile run was also a part of my plan, and I did incur injuries while running due to overstraining, which then deterred me from running for some time altogether. I also pulled a glute muscle while doing yoga, which took me months to recover from.  

I was completely out of touch with my physical body, my surroundings and my inner reality.

In truth, I was in a survival mode. And I had been in a survival mode for many years. The biochemical signature states of my nervous system were that of arousal and stress. On the surface, I needed to achieve and prove myself. Underneath my ambition and perfectionism, however, I was merely trying to be safe. The belief that I needed to excel was deeply ingrained in my unconscious. I can trace this belief to as early as middle school. I do not remember its origin, but I can infer that it developed as a defense mechanism against criticism. Growing up in a household and educational system where praise was scarce and criticism was abundant, and being quite intelligent and capable by nature, I learned to shield myself with excellence. Thus, fear of failure and anxiety to perform took the driver seat in my life. I was not motivated by recognition and reward. In fact, those made me largely uncomfortable because they put me in a spotlight and added more pressure onto me. I was simply protecting myself. I believed that if I did well and I looked well, nobody could touch me.

Relaxation and stillness felt unsafe. I had this strange conviction that in order to do well and be well I needed to stress and obsess over everything. Unknowingly, I believed that I needed to be tense and I needed to try hard regardless of where I was, what I did and who I engaged with. It took me a long time to see that the need for self-preservation was at the root of this skewed thinking. In other words, if I was not alert, I was in danger. Afterall, vigilance is a primal survival instinct of all animals, including humans. It is for this reason that I have always found deep breathing so agitating. Deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous system felt self-defeating and unwise because it hindered my ability to defend myself. If I was not on my toes and paying attention, who would protect me?

I set goals and built habits precisely so I could feel confident and calm like, I imagined, a lion strolling through a jungle would, but the very states of confidence and calmness felt unsafe. I was no king of a jungle. I was a rabbit surrounded by snakes. As a child, now woman, as someone who was never taught self-care, self-respect and boundaries, I was a prey, and it would have been foolish to forget that.  

This is why I found myself unwilling to pause after the breakup. I was trying to push hard because that was the only way I knew to survive. However, I was too hurt to keep it up. I was like a wounded animal – too weak to fight.

The reality was that I did not follow through with the daily routine consistently. I never completed a 20-mile run. I did not turn meditation and reading into a regular practice. My lifestyle habits regressed as weeks and months went by. My physical body and home were neglected. I had bad acne. My home was messy. And I would eventually drop research work, and then leave school altogether.

I slid in a downward spiral, and it was only the beginning.

we are all codependent

“I am afraid to face the world. I am afraid to be criticized, blamed, make a mistake, fail to do something. I believe I am incapable of taking care of myself, in particular managing my money and investments.”

From My Journal, Day 2

It was discovered, surprisingly, that family members of alcoholics and other addicts benefit from the addition much like an addict does. Moreover, addict’s closed ones often encourage and support the addiction.

This relational dynamic is termed codependence. Some deny that there is such a thing as a codependent relationship outside of the context of a clinically diagnosed addiction. Afterall, “no man is an island” and we all must depend on each other to a degree. Many confuse codependence with interdependence. Although, both phenomena describe the dependent nature of a relationship, the latter is characterized by healthy dependence, whereas the former exhibits unhealthy dependence. The definitions of “healthy” and “unhealthy” dependence are challenging to agree upon, and the matter is further clouded by the notion of adaptability. While a few attempt to set a more objective measure for healthy dependence, e.g., the ideas of love one may come across in Buddhist teachings, others advocate that any form of an adapted behavior is healthy as long as it serves all parties involved. The latter is particularly propagated by psychotherapy. 

Enabling one’s addiction does serve an addict by helping them escape reality, as well as it serves an enabler by absolving them of personal responsibility. As long as one is focused on someone else’s issues, they do not have to face their own. Thus, an addict is trapped in their addiction, and an enabler is stuck on deflection. This is the dance of codependence.

I was a codependent. Rather more accurately, I have seeds of codependence within me. Perhaps, we all do. Perhaps, when environmental conditions are favorable, the seeds of codependence sprout in all of our lives. Those seeds certainly germinated and grew into a rampant invasive foliage in the garden of my life.

I was a rather independent, at times rebellious, child. I insisted on walking to school by myself. I did homework without anyone’s assistance. I did not come to teachers for help, nor did I need my parents to check my work. I did well in school, regardless. I never cared for study groups, nor did I care for friend circles. I had friends, but I resented the hierarchy inherent to any social pack. So, I enjoyed much of my time alone.

I have been living alone and providing for a rather comfortable life for many years now. I thoroughly enjoy my financial self-reliance, and I found living alone to be the most enriching fulfilling experience I have had so far. In fact, I found it to be more profound than any relationship, platonic or otherwise, I have ever had. I dreamt of living alone when I was a child, and now that I do, it never grows old or tiresome on me.

I have always cherished my alone time. And I have always admired my sovereignty.

Yet, I found myself obsessing over and chasing after romantic relationships for as long as I could remember. I feared that come holidays and birthdays I would have no friends to enjoy a party with. There had never been a time when I was not entangled in some friendship drama and hung up on a man I dated or wanted to date. Both persisted in my life like weeds infesting a neglected flowerbed.

I routinely got up at five in the morning and went for a run before starting my workday, but I depended on a man to wake me up on a weekend. I scheduled home and car repairs and paid bills, but I depended on a man to check my mail. I regularly spoke up in meetings, but I followed behind a man’s back in a restaurant. I made good money, but I needed a man to tell me what to do with it. I had good taste and a developed sense of style, but I let a man dictate how I dressed. I was a deep thinker and a skilled debater, but I allowed a man to censor me.

I savored the peace and quiet of my home, but I talked incessantly and uncontrollably around friends. I had deep understanding of and empathy for others, yet I indulged in gossip and criticism at their expense with friends. I developed insights into human nature and cultivated wisdom in my solitude, and I shared the “Woe is me” attitude with friends. I had great ambitions and solid work ethic to support them, yet I acted like I had no choice but to be overworked and overwork myself in front of friends. I had the strength to pull myself through and out of the darkest of depressive episodes, but I constantly lost my composure and threw my hands up in helplessness and despair around friends.  

Around others, I entered a dream-like state, unconscious of myself and unaware of others.  

I showed up as a strong independent woman, as cliché as it sounds, when I was alone. And I was once again a child – powerless and helpless – in my relationships.

It was an interesting dichotomy. It was mental really. I was able to shapeshift between the two states and their associated roles as little as within a single day.

In my childish state, I required constant reassurance via text messages, phone conversations and in person. I frequently got upset, and I needed to be calmed down and talked off a ledge (figuratively speaking). I lost sight of my own strength, endurance and independence. I questioned whether I had those anymore. I was so dependent on external validation, I could not cope with simple everyday frustrations without picking up my phone, complaining and venting.

There were many reasons to explain these maladaptive behavioral patterns. They were a response to an early life trauma, an inheritance of multigenerational trauma, a product of our culture and societal expectations, and a mechanism to cope with my immediate environment. Whereas trauma and culture planted the seeds of codependence within me in rather complex and unavoidable ways, my environment watered those seeds.

Within the boundaries of my personal microcosm, which included my platonic and romantic relationships, I was consistently subjected to the very things I feared to face in the greater macrocosm, that is the world as a whole. I experienced blame, criticism, disrespect, deception, control and manipulation. I simply did not know that I deserved better. Some attempted to change me and led me to believe that I was the flawed and troubled one, that I needed saving and fixing, which is the conviction I further reinforced through therapy. The support I experienced was ingenuine and inconsistent. My challenges and pain served as an ego boost to others. Like many, I was a victim of gaslighting. I was drenched in gasoline, and I blew up in response to the slightest spark only to be faulted and fault myself for it, and then look for more ways to fix and change myself.

In reality, my environment needed to change. My environment nourished the seeds of codependence within me. The seeds were within me, but the food supply was not. The seeds remain within me, but I am conscious of their existence now, and I am aware of my environment. I accept all that I am and all that I have the potential to become – healthy and dysfunctional, – and I reject the influences that nurture the worst of me.  

It is not about eradicating the seeds of codependence within us. It is not about exterminating any seeds that give rise to various parts of our shadow self or shadow aspects of our collective. That is akin to death. There simply cannot be light without darkness. Rather, it is about bringing awareness to those, otherwise hidden, parts of ourselves. It is about accepting and respecting our dual nature. It is about utilizing the tools of awareness, understanding and patience to consciously cultivate the environment within and outside of ourselves wherein the seeds of all that we desire to be may flourish, and the seeds of that which harms us and those around us may remain dormant.

we attract what we are

“I am enough.”

From My Journal, Day 1

On a seemingly unremarkable night, I found myself rolling on the floor and screaming that I deserved to be loved for all of me.

A few hours prior, I ended yet another relationship. I was alone. I was angry. My pain was so intense, the image of me curled up on that floor has since vividly imprinted on my mind.  

The truth is I did not believe it. I did not believe I was deserving of love. I did not believe I was enough. I yelled it. I wrote it in my journal. But I did not believe it. I did not understand it. I did not see it reflected in any aspect of my life.

The objective reality was that I was a very unhappy person, and I was unhappy to be around. My mindset was marred with negativity. I was trapped in victim mentality. I had a history of battling clinical depression on and off for years. I was crippled by anxiety. I routinely gossiped and complained; and I envied, judged, criticized, blamed, and guilted others. I had frequent arguments and meltdowns. I often acted like an inconsolable child. I was reactive, volatile and explosive. I lashed out, I cursed, I yelled, and I cried. In short, I was an emotional roller-coaster.  

Below my eruptive surface, I experienced helplessness and powerlessness. I felt unsafe, insecure, unloved, and neglected. I perceived manipulation, control, and oppression. I was haunted by persistent guilt and fear. What appeared to be an unstable unpredictable emotional roller-coaster to others manifested as a constant unyielding swing of a pendulum to me. On one extreme, I felt like a child – abandoned, abused, lacking support and protection. On the other, I was boiling in resentment and rage, which I expressed in a haphazard attempt to protect myself.

At various times in my life, I indeed experienced neglect and abuse, deception, control and manipulation. I did miss a strong supportive hand and a soft soothing touch. My subjective experiences were minimized, denied and in other ways invalidated. I was accused of being too sensitive, and I was mocked for my endless attempts to devise effective strategies to cope with my reality. I was not taught respect and appreciation, patience, tolerance and acceptance, boundaries and self-care. I was akin to a sponge – readily and indiscriminately absorbing undesirable mental and emotional experiences of others, which were conveniently projected and deflected onto me.  

It comes, therefore, as no surprise that I leaked negativity.

It was my norm. It was my reality. It was the only reality I knew. It felt familiar, comfortable and, in a warped manner, safe. I experienced it to different degrees in my platonic and intimate relationships. I sought out bullies and I sought out the bullied. I validated oppressors, and I protected the oppressed. I was a victim, and I was a tyrant.

It is what I unconsciously believed I deserved.

I believed I needed to fight for everything I desired – dreams, goals, accomplishments, recognition, attention, appreciation, consideration, respect, love. I believed I needed to earn my place at a table – every table I sat down at. I believed it was my responsibility to manage others’ reactions – to be sensitive around the narcissistic, self-sufficient around the neglectful, soothing around the distraught, strong around the weak, weak around the insecure, small around the envious, quiet around the irritable, resourceful around the demanding, quick around the impatient. I made faults of others my own – I blamed myself for manipulating the manipulator, failing to provide support to the selfish, being unavailable to the avoidant, taking the ungrateful for granted. I molded myself to accommodate doubts, fears, expectations, and fantasies of others.

It was not enough. None of it was ever enough. I did not believe myself to be enough.

It enraged me. Anger was my signature emotion. Since I did not have boundaries, self-worth, self-respect, and self-care to protect me, nor was I surrounded by people who were willing or able to protect me, I resorted to anger. I perpetually disrupted the very harmony I worked so hard to create. I brought about turmoil. I rattled the cage I built for myself.

And then I kicked myself for it.

It was a ceaseless cycle.

The commonplace advice on how to end this cycle is to find people we can forge healthy relationships with (or attempt to change those we have an unhealthy relationship with). We are encouraged to search and wait for those who will show us that we are lovable and deserving of respect, teach us how to love and respect ourselves, affirm how worthy we really are; in other words, mirror all that is good and wholesome back to us.

One of my therapists told me I would find healing in my relationships. Yet, no matter how many relationships (mostly platonic) I ended and began, no matter how often I set spoken and unspoken intent to forge a conscious relationship founded on respect and appreciation, no matter how many conversations centered on awareness I held with people, I found myself caught in the same dysfunctional relational dynamic – either I was enabling a victim or gratifying a perpetrator.

The harsh truth is that people who have a healthy sense of self-worth do not have close relationships with people who do not feel worthy. They may extend a helping hand, impart words of wisdom to us, point at the beautiful lovable aspects of ourselves (that we cannot see), and even embrace us with tenderness, kindness and love. But they do not lay in bed with those they help. They do not kindle a friendship with those in need of saving. They do not weave the strings that are ragged into the fabric of their support system. They do not build their life on top of a foundation made up of chipped, cracked and otherwise unstable pillars.

I was ragged alright – neglected, worn out and ripped. My entire life revolved around avoidance, obsession, addiction, and compulsive need to validate and prove myself. The only love one could mirror back to me was the codependent kind.  

In order to attract different, I needed to become different.

I know it now, and I knew it then. But I was not capable of admitting and accepting it. I was not ready for everything it took to change. Sometime before the breakup, I wrote in my journal that I wanted to “live up to my own standards, be secure [within] myself, be proud of myself, feel powerful from within, be in charge of my own life, take good care of myself, think kindly of myself, treat myself with respect and set boundaries; and everything else [would] follow.” In other words, I knew I needed to develop a better relationship with myself instead of seeking to distract myself with others. I knew I needed to be alone. Yet, I tossed and turned at night unable to tune out the incessant “But I need validation” in my head.

I did end my romantic relationship shortly after (somewhat to my own surprise), but it would be a while before I was able to truly focus on me – to go within, stay there, and mend my relationship with myself.