your first letter...

Even though I love talking to you personally, the circumstances have obliged us to use other means to keep in touch and not letting our friendship to fade away.
It has been a few weeks since you have been gone and I already feel it has been a century.
I have to confess that it gets harder for me knowing how many difficulties you are facing in this new time of your life; that is why I have decided to start writing to you hoping to help you go through all those things that cause sadness and fear and to let you know, more than ever that you are not alone.

How can someone feel so lonely when surrounded by people was your question in our last conversation, you said you have met many interesting people but for some reason you cannot connect.

I have seen this so many times, I have experienced it myself, emotional loneliness not always is attached to social loneliness, we might be having continued interaction with others without creating any kind of closeness and that takes us to the isolation feeling.

You might agree with me that it is absurd that in our times people can feel dispatched from others, in a time of technology, easy means of communication, social networks etc we seem to be growing apart, that is definitely sad.

The truth is dear, that everyone needs at least one person who support us, someone who, we know, loves us and cares about us honestly, when we don't have that person or we "believe" or "feel" we don't have that person, it will cause pain and again loneliness.

You might be feeling bad right now but it can be just a superficial feeling led by the new life you are starting, or it may be something serious, so let me ask you some questions:
Do you have any physical change? Like in your appetite, sleep, behavior or reactions?
Have you felt you are becoming shy, quite or lonely?
Have you been depressed or sleeping a lot?
I am asking you this because those things could tell us how serious your condition is so we can work together in the solution for you situation.

I want you to be careful ok? In the need for removing that feeling from your life you can develop emotional dependencies by getting attached to people who show you a little acceptance and company and who could become the center of your life if you are not careful. I want you to know that no-one and nothing could remove that feeling successfully without causing more pain and damage. For example if you decide to start drinking, or smoking, even using drugs or making out with anyone, at the end the consequences will be worst than the cause.

So what do you do you might be asking? Well I will write you soon about it... As for now just think about what I just wrote, and hang in there... I am here!

Be careful!
Your friend in this side of the world

Diana!

Dear friend...

How have you been? 

I have noticed that you are a bit better but still trying to figure things out, did you think about what I wrote to you the last time? You were giving me hints that you already fell into one of the “substitutes” to eliminate loneliness; there is nothing to be ashamed of, but let’s try to find a more permanent solution agreed?

There is an obvious problem with trying to face loneliness by any of those means and it’s because they don’t last, if you have noticed once the initial “welfare sensation” pasts and leaves behind an even deeper hole in your soul, that is why you have the urge to do it  again and again and that is how we fail into addictions, -remember we were talking about emotional dependencies?- that is one of the many things that can “manage you” and all because you don’t want to feel alone.

I don’t want to spend more time trying to describe something that you may know very well, instead, I want to talk about what has helped me, because as you very well know I am also far from home.

The first thing I suggest you to do is to have a plan for your life; wait, wait , it is not as obvious as you think, you need to be very honest with yourself and plan your life seriously; life is not over because you finished college, and you don’t have to become another boring adult who is from work to home and backwards; make the decision to learn something new, save to travel somewhere, get something to look forward to, trust me, it will help you a lot.

Another thing you can do is to join a club, a sport team, a class of any type, so you can meet new people and start doing different activities with them, which leads me to the next thing you can do and is to make sure your agenda is busy; do not let space to laziness because it can lead you to think and over think simple facts of your life.

And the last thing, dear friend, pay attention to your spiritual life; you know I am not a fan of a religion, but I do believe that when you communicate constantly with God in a very personal level, all things will improve.

What if you make some changes taking into account my suggestions and we talk about the results the next time? I am looking forward to knowing  f they become useful for you since my main interest is that you can have a great life.

And don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the emotional dependencies you asked me about, I will write to you about it in the next letter.

Hang in there buddy, I am here for you.

Love,

Diana

Your friend in this side of the world.

"I read your letter..."

How are you? I read your letter and I was very pleased to see that you have been applying my advice and it is going great!

You reminded me about my promise to talk to you about emotional dependencies; sorry it took me this while to catch up, I hope what I write helps you there, in the distance.

You might agree with me on the fact that everybody needs someone who shows love and interest about us right? Being loved is one of the greatest experiences in life, it makes you feel special and worth it; unfortunately sometimes we feel no-one is willing to love us, at least no-one outside of our family circle, we find ourselves not having a best friend, not even close ones, most of the time this is real when you are in a new country or when you are just married, or even when the time passes and you have a family that absorbs all of your time; not having, or feeling that we don’t have those people in our lives makes us feel really sad and bad about ourselves.

So this is the thing, when someone appears, and that someone is offering us exactly what we were longing for, we don’t hesitate to accept him/her; we don’t really care who the person is, or the quality of the love he/she is offering, we are like a thirsty person in a desert, and that my friend, is how an emotional dependence begins.

It doesn’t matter how wonderful a relationship of any kind is at the beginning, it can turn out in something destructive for ourselves if we don’t handle them carefully.

You might be wondering how to know when we have an emotional dependence, well let’s define it exactly; an emotional dependence is when we believe that the presence of someone is mandatory for us to feel satisfied and secure.

Now, let’s go a little beyond and let’s try to think on the people that cause this feeling, and I think is quite safe to exclude our parents since it is a natural thing to feel that we need them in our lives, and even though we can develop an insane dependence of them I don’t think this is the case ok?

So, let’s think about the people who surround you and let’s see if our relationship with them fits into the following description:

·         Jealousy, I mean the feeling of wanting the person only for us, like exclusively, feeling really bad when his/her attention goes to someone else.

·         Preference on expending a big amount of time alone with that person and when it doesn’t happen it makes us feel bad.

·         When he/she tries to go away from us, we get mad or depressed, like when they are busy and cannot be with us as much as we want.

·         When we feel or think that we don’t need more friend and we don’t even try to get them.

·         To experience romantic/sexual feelings towards that person leading us to fantasies.

·         We pay attention to his/her appearance, behavior, interests etc.

·         We offer physical expressions of love beyond the accepted standard.

·         We cannot see their mistakes clearly. Despite of the fact that others can.

If you, my friend, have a relationship with someone with these characteristics, it means that you have developed or are in the way to develop an emotional dependence.

It is hard to accept that maybe we don’t love someone deeply and honestly but rather, we are just afraid of living without that person, we are afraid of accepting the possibility that we allowed him/her to become our whole world and it would feel empty if we stop seeing him/her.

Oh well, this was a long letter but I think we can discuss how to fix this the next time right? I am glad we are communicating, I am glad to know that our friendship is strong and sincere.

Take care of you my friend,

Diana