This is the first installation of the series Dear Racho, in which my long time friend Rachel and I write each other open letters. It is in response to this.
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Dear Racho,
Thank you so much for your open letter! I'm happy to hear from you! I know we met—and chatted for 6 hours—last spring, but it seems like longer ago. It’s nice to hear your voice (in my head as I read your letter.)
It pains me to hear that life seems to be giving you a hard time. Ending relationships with core pillars of your support system sounds super destabilizing. I think it’s completely valid to feel angry, heartbroken, frustrated, miserable, trapped in a spiral of angry thoughts and feelings, as you mentioned in your letter. Understandable in every respect.
You mentioned in the letter that you learned that those with low self worth tend to make excuses for people’s bad behavior. And once these relationships end, these people with low self worth often rekindle their relationships with the people that hurt them or subconsciously seek people with similar issues. The fact that you mentioned this implied to me that you may have identified with the situation. It makes me wonder if the problem was that some of the people in your life were treating you poorly, and you unconsciously were permissive of that behavior.
Hence, I would like to start my thoughts to you with a couple important reminders. You do not deserve to be shouted at. You do not deserve to be insulted. You do not deserve to be condescended to. You do not deserve to be touched without your permission. You do not deserve to be deceived about important things. You do not deserve to be belittled. These actions are not okay.
You are important. Accordingly, you deserve to be treated with respect. This is true of you, as it is true of anyone else.
As adults—I guess I’m actually an adult now—we are the primary protectors or advocatesfor ourselves. We are the ones that are tasked with personal maintenance, oradvocating for our own physical and mental wellbeing. This means that we need to be aware of when we are treated poorly, and we need to be the ones to take action when we are hurt. Whether this means gently confronting the person or deciding to keep a distance from him or her, something needs to be done. You can’t let yourself neglect yourself. It takes practice but it’s an attainable skill.
One realization you had, that you mentioned only briefly in your letter was that taking some space from a person can help you to objectively look at your relationship with him or her. I get the feeling that this realization plays a bigger role in your process of your reflection than you may think. Why would removing ourselves from some important thing make it easier for us to objectively think about that thing? Objectively, rationally think. I wonder if the reason is that we are so emotionally invested in our relationships, and heavily charged emotion tends to hinder objective or rational thinking. I know for me it’s almost impossible to think about why my relationships ended or what my ideal friend or partner would be like if I feel like crying all the time. So, as an extension of your realization, we need to chill out a bit before we try to process what happened and why.
In the first paragraph of your letter, you mentioned “going through the stages of grief”, but for some reason going through spirals of anger and sadness. This made me wonder if maybe you were attempting to objectively think while also trying to handle having intense emotions. Intense emotions led to trying to “solve” them, which led to intense emotions and frustration, and so on.
Putting these two ideas together, it may be helpful to divert your attentionfrom trying to process what happened with your friends or your ex-romantic partner until you find that you are less emotionally invested in them, by shifting your attention to practicing being your own advocate and attending to your personal responsibilities, which you mentioned only seem to increase with time. Adulting is hard, as you said, but as adults (as we are), it is a really important part of our lives and wellbeing. Why not focus on that for a bit, and then revisit your beliefs about friendship or relationships in a couple months? Meh. There’s no need to rush.
I dunno. I basically think what you said makes a ton of sense and tried to string them together.
Love,
Rina
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