Hello Anita 🙂

I just wanted to let you know I am home for the holidays until the 26th. And N was not on the plane! He didn’t show up, not sure what is going on for him. I was surprised to feel that I was actually a bit disappointed not to see him… I didn’t expect that feeling. But then I sat to two really nice girls about my age and it took my mind off N long enough to minimize the sadness I felt. I listened to high vibe music and watched a tv show I love. I was a little sad again last night, thinking about what this trip was planned to be with him here… then we watched the new grinch cartoon and I was surprised to feel like I saw N in the child version of the grinch when he goes home to no loving family Christmas and that is what makes him the adult mean grinch. Thought that was an interesting connection and it makes me sad for him. I have spent the majority of the time here so far with my sisters and it feels nice, but I still have a simmering anxiety that kinda shows up and fades. I am fairly certain the anxiety/sadness is about N, not having his presence and feeling alone.

I will read and reply to your message soon, but my online times may vary while I am home.

happy holidays!! 🙂

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

“The thing I want more than anything in my life right now is friends who are like me in this way, like you, but I need people in person…  I am ready to meet people who can raise my vibration and teach me“- maybe a Buddhist community in your area will be such a place where you can meet in-person others with chakra/ vibration-level awareness?

-You know what, I have actually looked into this. But something held me back and I am not sure what, but I do think that I should and will.

“Interesting. So it’s the dynamic of someone having expectations for me, and my desire to complete them and win their love. I need to be careful of this dynamic“- yes. If you tried hard, early on, as a hatchling, to make your (figuratively blind) father SEE you, and you failed, the desire to make him see you didn’t die. It awakens with the next figuratively blind person in your life (N) who reminds you of your father in some ways (such as his focus on making money).

-So in other words, as long as the next partner I am with is not a “figuratively blind person” then that desire/dynamic won’t awaken in me?

“So when I arrived in Portland last weekend“- wait, I thought that your parents lived in WA… they don’t?

-They do but I fly into the Portland airport.

You wrote in response to my dads message “– I hope so.. I am impressed by his wording, wow.”

-I am very skeptical of F, he confuses me though. He taps into this understanding at times, but then the scary part is he can leave the space at any time. I don’t think he has the bandwidth to see all of me, like you said earlier “- they have a narrow logic/ understanding and when SEEING you requires a wider logic on their part, they don’t try to expand their understanding, but reject the required understanding as ridiculous, something not worthy of their time and effort.” And I hope it is not a manipulation I am not seeing through, but I feel like he is becoming aware that there are things he can’t see, and things he missed. Like the small dinner we had when he was in town for a golf trip, remember? the tears in his eyes when he asked me “so how did you go from being a jock to this artist?” I want to be skeptical of tears, like you have said before and like N would show when it was convenient for him, also my dad was drinking that day. But then when I was in town recently, he soberly, in the morning, at the intermission of my sisters performance actually, he asked that question again. As if it is something he has certainly asked himself, like how did he miss the signs that I was an artist, a very significant part of who I am. Recently he has also admitted to me that he was not present in our childhoods, he said “you guys wouldn’t have been able to tell but when I played and laughed with you guys typically I was thinking about work and stressed about the mortgage.” In my head I remember thinking “we knew.” Another way he is out of touch is with my brother, he takes no outward responsibility for my brothers suffering and loss of self, my dad thinks it is because of my mom or some mental illness. Anita, it is so strange my dad, sometimes he feels in touch and other times he is completely robotic. I told him this once when I was in High-school that I saw him as two people, the comment went over his head, but I have always felt this with him. He is also the person actually that got me to look towards eastern philosophy, such as the author Eckhart Tolle, he gave me the book “The Power of Now.” and my uncle, his right hand man at his company, told me about the book “untethered soul.” In my family we speak about philosophical topics of these books, my dads side of the family, the same side that is “out of touch.” I am excited actually to go home for Christmas cause I never know what kind of conversations I will have with my family members on that side. My dads side is philosophical and out of touch, starting with my grandfather. While my mom’s side is highly empathetic, yet also socially out of touch, overly affectionate and hyper-emotional.

You quoted me: “It is confusing because he still gaslights and is someone I have to be cautious of but in these moments I feel  Am I being naive? Is he all Shark?“- I don’t know. It is difficult to say because an important part of his work is one-to-one PR, isn’t it? And being as successful as he is, suggests to me that he is versed in saying all the right things to the right people, talking their language so to draw them in.. I don’t want you to confuse Style (him talking your language, the italicized above) and Substance (him believing in the italicized above).

It’ll be interesting to hear (or read) how he talks to people who think very differently from you…

-Yes in his line of work he has to talk to people in their language. What is interesting is when I was home last, after the conversation about N sort of ended and we were still in a deeper space talking about his girl L, I asked him “Are you ever afraid that you accidentally carry your work self over to your personal life and manipulate family how you have to your clients?” He called it a grey area (this is where I stay skeptical of F, but I try to still listen with love because he is, I believe, trying to be as honest as his Mo will allow) basically he said he manipulates for a living and it is bound to bleed into his personal life. But then he sort of started to talk about money, he changed the topic to something he was more comfortable in, you know somehow the conversation turned into how the government manipulates and covid is made in a lab blah blah, I could see right through it, it was him really saying to me “I lost power in the conversation and now I am taking it back.” I let him go on but then just said that topics like what he was talking about make me sad, I asked “why do you like to talk about these negative things?” and he said “They make me feel grounded.” Then we realized we needed to leave for my sisters performance, we got lost in conversation actually and were almost late! lol.

“– Being mostly Teflon (not asking why or listen to the whys) is his way to NOT feel pain . Understanding further (asking why) is your way to.. not feel pain, or to lessen your pain. Same is true to me: the more I learn and understand, the lesser my pain.”

I told this to N, when we were together. He would say that his way was the stoic way to peace, to be unbothered. that was his excuse to stay there. Inevitably I finally listened and left him there.

“- your mother paid for yours and N’s flight?”

No, just mine.

“- I bet you can ask at the ticket counter- if not earlier- to be seated elsewhere and you can explain why. I assume the flight crew is interested in preventing conflict between passengers.”

-For some reason I feel like I should just let what happens happen… I am not sure why but there is some part of me that wants to  make amends and allow a friendship if he is capable. I am not sure if this is wishful thinking, but I just wonder if there is some way for me to be there for him if he is struggling. His family is falling apart right now, he does not like to be home his sister left and his brother bullied him as a kid. He just does not have anyone very genuine in his family, except his sister who is aloof, staying away from the bad vibrations that is their home.

“- wait, are you saying that you fell out of love with N?”

I am no longer “in-love” with him. I gave up hope that he is the right partner for me. But I do still love him as a person, and I care for him. There is a huge part of him that wants to be loved, his mom did not show much affection and his dad was aloof. I want him to be loved. I don’t think he loves himself very much, I think he did more when I first met him, he took himself to yoga and took care of his body in a self love type of way, fed himself well, he cooks very well, but that is as deep as he loves himself.

“– I think that all people are .. shall I say, created-in-the-image of a high vibrational self, and then things happen that lower the vibrational level for the great majority of people…Which reminds me- I JUST realized- my personal connection to sea turtles from the time I was a child:….the camera followed sea turtles from the time they hatched out of their eggs on the shore, to the time they reached the ocean and after, detailing all the dangers they faced…This is how I view mental- emotional health/ vibration level: it’s lowered and lowered for most from the time we come to be…I don’t believe in destiny, as in there is someone special for you, pre-destined for you. I hope that as you date again, you will look for the vibrational level of the man…making each other shine brighter together than alone.”

-I loved reading about your beliefs and connection to seaturtles! It reminded me of a nature video I remember from childhood, despite my lack of memory as well, the video was about penguins and their life from conception- young adulthood. lol just a random memory but funny both of us remembered some nature documentary following young animals… cause we were one too!

-Do you think you are getting closer to your higher vibrational self, that existed before many things out of your control that lowered it?

-I hope I will seek a vibration rather than a man as well. I want to develop the eyes to see vibration before I am able to fall for the earthly physical things. With N, the problem was that I fell in love with a lot of things that had nothing to do with vibration. He is first of all a very beautiful man.. the most beautiful on the outside that I have ever dated or even see in real life. He is 6 foot 7, has beautiful thick golden hair, and just a strong and sturdy build. Just like the clay molds of a greek god for goodness sakes! It made it so that I was attracted to him, despite a very deeply intimate connection (aka vibrational attraction). I just need to remember a relationship will bare more fruit in the long term if I hold those from my eyes at the beginning and instead try to feel an attraction through other ways that are not purely physical. He was also fun and had positive qualities, it was definitely not all physical I wouldn’t of stayed if he was boring.

“– amazing, I wrote the above (“making each other shine brighter together than alone”) before reading this. So, indeed, you are better alone than together with N, and the right man for you is one with whom you will be better together than alone.”

-I love our “amazing” moments Anita! Exactly, I am better alone. He was like candy that I was addicted and attached too that was harming me inside, unhealthy. I already feel my glow and strength returning to me. I cannot wait (well I can for a while but you know what I mean haha) for someone to glow brighter with, I am just excited it is still in my future and that that wasn’t all there was for me, something I started to believe..

“”You wrote yesterday: “Speaking with you on this platform has raised my vibrations“- same here: speaking with you has raised my vibrations, thank you!!!

-This makes me very happy 🙂 and yes I am currently in AZ.

Seaturtle

Anita,

I am reading and responding to your reply now 🙂

Seaturtle

Anita,

“He said with words that he wanted to grow but he didn’t with actions and I don’t think he sees the value in it, but why? So this is a huge value I have for a future partner: curious about life and a want to grow in wisdom and understand meaning in human life“- It is easy to say words.. maybe the why (above and here) is that it’s way easier to reject things before consideration (the Teflon Mind) and it is way easier and simpler, in the short term, to not consider the meaning in human life, etc.”

-Perhaps it is easier but isn’t it more painful? I am not teflon, so perhaps I just don’t relate at all. Is his MO, teflon? that is something about him that likely won’t change?

-When I say more painful, I mean ignoring the meaning of why something happened, or why I behaved a certain way would make me feel stifled, like I was holding something back and needed to just burst. But he just let’s stuff just slide right off of him and not wonder about why or where they came from, being numb to the world sounds like the most lonely and pointless life, a waste of life itself if I may.

“I am feeling clearer now than I did last night and this morning“- good, that was Fri morning. How are you this Saturday?

-This Sunday I woke up a little stressed and here is why. Yesterday I asked my mom to text N asking for my flight confirmations, after all she did pay for it so I told her to text him “can you please send me her flight information that I paid you for” he did. This morning I went to see if I could choose a seat on the flight and realized there are no other seats and since we booked together and have the same confirmation I can see his flight information as well and we are sitting next to eachother…I figured he would cancel the flight since his family lives about 4 hours away from the airport by my family…but I suppose with the holiday flights perhaps he has no other option but to fly in and take a train to his home. But this puts us on all the flights and layovers together and I really don’t know how to feel about this. When I saw this I froze in time for about 30 minutes just not sure what to do.

“- how is your knee today, and did you do yoga? Yoga’s chest and shoulder opening poses are excellent for opening the heart chakra: I do one such every morning.”

My knee is moveable, and I was able to go on a little bike ride, but it ended up not being good for my sickness. My knee is badly bruised still, so I can move it but I can’t do like cat-cow yoga poses or anything on my knee, which is limiting. The yoga classes I have passes to are all hot yoga, and I am not sure if that would be good for me or not… I no longer have a fever or sore throat but I have just been too congested to go to work still, and I have a persistent cough. I am trying to stick with my beliefs that things happen for me not to me. So that I don’t go to far down the road of “I had such healthy plans for this week but instead have not been able to move my body much.” I have done stretching each day, short time, but yesterday I did some core exercises and pushups. Today I will look at some heart chakra yoga on youtube.

With love,

Seaturtle

Anita,

“I wish you had in-person/ irl emotional support right now so that N does not seem to be your only option for irl comfort, and so that you don’t make a decision to contact him out of desperation.”

Yes me too. I think this is a particularly vulnerable time for me being sick and having to worry financially, when N would have my back if I was sick. He was kind and would tell me not to worry about the money right now and just to get better. Later I would probably regret having needed him, which is how I would also feel if I asked my dad.

“- You are having a difficult time, Seaturtle, in multiple ways. Can you ask your father for financial help, since he has plenty of money?….And are you taking care of yourself physically/ did you see a doctor on zoom or whatnot?”

He would lend me money if I asked but it would come with strings, and I would feel obligated to act in a certain way towards him again so that he felt gratitude for it. He has lofty expectations for gratitude, ways that I have to behave around him that can involve hatch in her cage…

I have not seen a doctor because I have had this sickness before and have been self medicating, but I have been taking care of myself best as I can. Drinking fluids, eating protein, showering, painting. Today I think I will attempt some yoga floor work at home that does not hurt my knee.

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

This morning is the hardest one yet. I have not read your posts yet and will do after. I was able to go to work wednesday but yesterday and today developed a bad cough and so I have been home. Very stressed about my paycheck being too low for rent from missing these days sick but my voice is barely working.

Last night I missed my friend N, (please don’t roll your eyes, I already don’t feel like I can talk to my roommate about it because of what she said last time I missed him, honestly the air has been tense between us since and I feel judged by her). Anita I just want to crawl into a cave. I feel like I don’t know what is right or wrong right now and last night all I could think about was how cold the breakup was. The good memories we had together flooded my mind and I miss them, and I started to feel like I did break up with him coldly and not honoring the good.

Please don’t take this offensively Anita, but I just want to be honest because I need to be. Last night as I was questioning how things ended and wondering if it we could have made it work, if it is what I deserved in a partner, I thought about how the breakup happened. The two main events of the cash and n-word were the final straws, and I do still believe valid reasons, and yes I was mentally stressed trying not to break up with him for a year which is all enough to do so and I don’t regret it. But you have helped me see all these things and I started to wonder what is in this for you? I am just curious about you Anita, right now you are someone on the other line of these messages, who also helps other people on this thread daily, a very time consuming activity. What gives you the grace and wisdom to help all of us?

Anyways back to why it is a hard morning for me, despite the hard times with N, if I was ever sick or really upset he would come over to comfort me. He was good at ignoring problems and just going and having fun. I miss the comfort and fun. I know that the other things in the relationship needed to end but I feel sad this morning and miss the comfort and fun he brought me, he was always someone a phone call away from coming to give me a hug (reminds me of when you said to hug myself, so I just did). I am really trying my best here but I am sad and don’t know what is next for me. My finances are playing into my stress as well, my job has not made what I was told it would, I had a job interview this week the day after I got covid…so I had to reschedule for monday. I am sad because I had a whole plan this week to do my yoga, work extra days to make up for what I will miss for christmas, tonight is a birthday party with the play cast I was apart of, that now I don’t think I can go to coughing this way. I just had this while breakup planned healthy and I got knee injured and sick, I feel stuck. I keep trying to remind myself that things happen for me, not to me, it is just hard to see the light from where I am standing.

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

In response to the first portion of your reply on December 9, 2023 at 7:22 am. The second half was very helpful to my trip home.

“When we people are confronted with behaviors that embarrass us, behaviors that are negative, we tend to explain why we behaved that way, explanations that shed positive light on us, and that’s fair for as long as the explanations are true and as long as we express regret for those behaviors. What N did was not to explain himself but to TOTALLY DENY what he did, aka GASLIGHTING.”

I need more confidence in my instincts because wow was I manipulated, this is very validating, that there is a difference between explaining and denying. There were many times when he would accuse my intentions behind an action and I would try to explain to him my true thinking, but he would call my explanations excuses. I would then reply, “no I just want you to understand me and why I do things” then he would say I had double standards because he was not allowed to explain (which was really denying) and I was allowed to explain (true explanations of why). I still apologized after though, that my actions affetced him negatively, but wanted him to understand me, a process I wish he did, but really he would excuse his actions and never/can’t currently remember a time of him apologizing.

It is sad. I wish I could fix him, help him to learn to take responsibility and see others pain. See the weight of words, and emotional instincts so that he could one day experience a soulmate, and in that understand my breaking up with him. I know these are just wishes, before I tried to make them come true and now I know I cannot. Every time I made a wish upon a star, candle, or blowing an eyelash away, “I wish that N can be my soulmate” in different words each time.

“- a mask that’s covering his eyes, so he can’t see you. You can’t remove his mask. He has to acknowledge first that he has a mask on, and then intend to remove it.. and then do the hard work that it’d take to remove it.”

This is a feeling I want to express, maybe in a painting…poem or song. The feeling of loving someone with a mask on and trying so desperately to take it off so he would see me. The feeling of feeling frozen when I suddenly see the mask, not knowing how to speak it’s language. Feeling relieved it is gone, confused how I didn’t see it for so long, sad that I am not sad.. I want to be sad, instead I feel ‘nothing with a dose of loneliness’, a good title haha.

In response to a few points I haven’t addressed yet from your reply December 8, 2023 at 10:58 am.

– very well expressed.. wow! (1) Your past gloriously positive expressions about N (“He is supportive… He is truly a stand up man, he is so kind and deeply cares for those around him… my partner is a stand up man, no question“, etc.), were your subconscious efforts to present him in such a way that readers will discourage you from breaking up with him.

-What is interesting about this is that although this must’ve played into efforts to discourage readers from suggesting a breakup, I was also wanting that response from people still. when you mentioned breaking up for the first time, I remember feeling relief. I was looking for validation that it was the correct thing to do. Also I am a firm believer that you cannot get good counseling if you do not express the truth, and the truth as I knew it at the time was him being innocent. He correctly portrayed his innocence, very well and I believed it. I also believed the people around us, friends and family, that saw the side of him that I portrayed to you in the beginning, who would say how perfectly balanced we were.

“…because you were not ready for a breakup, and you didn’t want the readers to suggest a breakup.”

This, I think is the truest reason as to why I presented him so positively only. What is so complex though, is like I said above I did consciously want someone to see the situation and validate my instincts to leave, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond; not having a shared sense of humor or deeply spiritual conversations. I wonder if these were a moment I would meet that inauthentic mask on N, because when I would try to guide our conversation to a more spiritual place, often his responses would be about something I was not necessarily talking about. Whereas when I talk to others they can follow me there, like M or even other acquaintances. I would instead feel sort of frozen with N as he redirected me and I was pulled out of my meditative conversational state.

“- it will help to reevaluate him as he truly is because if you understand that he has no empathy for you, you are not likely to have so much empathy for him. It is harmful for a victim to have empathy for a perpetrator: it’d be like a deer having empathy for a hungry mountain lion (and because of that empathy, presenting itself as food for the mountain lion).”

I have thought alot about hatch in this breakup and definitely do not want to have empathy for her mountain lion (let’s say shark). It is hurtful when someone defends a shark in your life, because it invalidates you and I don’t want to do this to myself. So I am open to evaluating my shark now. This creature has always been an interesting but very frightening creature for me. I once did not participate in a family vacation activity where they swam in the ocean in the dark to see manta-rays, out of my fear of sharks. I was the only one to not go, even my dads girlfriends two children at 7 and 9 years old! They eat Seaturtles, part of my evidence into believing I am a reincarnated seaturtle. I do not believe this so strongly, it is more of a little feeling that could be true, but who knows what really is true when these matters come to the surface. Anyways, is there anything specifically you think I should evaluate about N? I wonder, does evaluate mean to try to look behind his mask? Or evaluate him with the mask on.

“- it was a mistake to leave that poem for him because the love you expressed in that poem, the love for him, can only encourage him to contact you for another manipulative round, as he’d see it as his success in the art of manipulation.”

Do you think he knows he was manipulating?

– a gaslighter does not have love and respect for their victim, the gaslightee.

-when I would sense this lack of love or respect, I would bring it up to him and he would act as though I offended him. “How could you not feel loved after..” listing things like coming to see my family, being there when I cry etc. I would then get confused and think I was just ungrateful. I would mention the respect, and he would say “you think I would stay with someone I didn’t respect?” I would then think I was just projecting my what my father thought of me onto N.

Seaturtle

Good evening Anita,

I think I’m still a bit delicate because reading “blah blah blah” made me feel sad because there were parts of the relationship that were real and honestly it’s too painful to think it was all just blah blah blah. He must of meant some of the things he said. Shortly after reading this I made a comment to M that being sick makes me miss him taking care of me. And she snapped at me and said “girl you have to stop.” It’s not even been a week I just feel depressed and sad tonight and very alone. It’s my first time being tempted to text him to just feel something, I want a hug so badly right now. I also went on a hike on Sunday and fell really bad, I split my knee open and M helped me glue it back together but I am having a hard time walking. That was the first moment I missed N, I wanted to be comforted, instead my friend was laughing that I fell haha. I just feel so alone, the COVID is making my body ache, and because of my knee I haven’t been able to go to hot yoga. I have a fever now and just wish my mom was here, but I also don’t want to be weak I know I can take care of myself and I am doing that. But I just feel so alone. I also haven’t cried since the breakup and it’s not what I was expecting I thought I’d be more sad. I just feel a little lost Anita.

Seaturtle