'He made me feel worthless back then and, in hindsight, I don’t think I have ever gotten over it'
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Dear Polly,
This boy broke my heart and found a girlfriend six months later, despite “not believing in labels.” We stopped talking completely … until last week. He reached out to me with the notion that “we should catch up” because I was “one of the most genuine and caring people he knew.” This fucked with my head, and I immediately fell back into freshman-year me — I got blackout drunk, talked to him at a party, and I can’t remember what I said to him. We haven’t spoken since.
With this belief system at your disposal, you can keep ruining everything after college, too. You can ruin your first job. You can ruin moving to your first brand-new city. If it makes you feel any better, I pretty much ruined ages 16 to 26 obsessing about a series of guys who weren’t that into me — with a short break between ages 18 and 20, when I dated someone who actually loved me like crazy. I promptly got sick of that person. Of course.
What an empty person, right? But let’s go back to the central principle of your letter and my response: I thought that I was obsessed with love or this or that guy, but I was really obsessed with my own shortcomings and with the fantasy that someone was going to come along who would finally accept me as I am.
This is hard to do when you’re just a regular mortal. It’s hard for every single regular mortal to do, in fact, unless they’re delusional, and even then, they have to feed the narcissistic beast within forever and ever and they’re never quite full . But as someone whose anxiety and depression are managed with a 50-50 blend of vigorous exercise and patient self-talk, I can tell you that being okay with your flaws and shortcomings is a big part of the struggle. A big, big, big part.
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