Category: love

Pain and discipline for my happiness

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I am happy these days. Things are going well. I moved to the new house. It’s gorgeous. I am playing water-polo, I am doing spinning at the gym, I am studying for my private pilot exams and I am getting ready to my first solo flight. Work is going well too. So, all in all, great times.

When I was spinning this morning, I was thinking about the pain that I feel while doing the physical effort, and how much this gives me motivation. My body feels great after a workout. Same thing with water-polo: there is not only the physical pain of suffering during the training, but also the coaching time; the authority of the coach, the discipline; the orders, in a way, comfort me. They make me feel kind of safe. It’s not easy to explain, but I find that an environment of school, like learning waterpolo, learning to fly in a classroom, it all brings me back to the comfort time I had back when I was little, when life was good and free of worries. And now that I think, sports was a big part of my youth. The pain and the discipline of those days, be it at school, at sports or at home (with my dad being quite authoritarian) make me feel good. These are elements I am familiar with, and I associate good times related to those years of my life.

Yes, studying was tough, doing competitive sport was hard, receiving instructions from the coach was tough sometimes, but it was what I was used to. And it makes me feel good today. I realise today that I have picked activities that give me a similar amount of pain and discipline as when I was 14, 18 or 20. This makes me think of what Alain de Botton said about love and marriage. In the article “why you will marry the wrong person” he says that “what we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood”. You can check out the article here. In my case, I was looking for pain and discipline in very specific environments. By reproducing these, I have been able to re-create a space that feels familiar, in a good way. I am filling the baskets with lots of eggs that give me plenty of goodness.

So great to think back to only 2 years ago, when I was still depressed and on medication, and looking at today, with a good life and a stronger self. Pain and Discipline: be welcome. Love: I welcome you too, whenever you decide to knock at my door (’cause I ain’t doing Tinder!).

With hope.

Laura

Love in the time of depression

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The movie was about cholera. I am talking about love and depression. Is it wise to look for love when you are still fighting depression?

My psychologist tells me that I need to forget about my ex, and look ahead, not behind. He is probably right, but for the past 4.5 years I have been holding on the thought of W., as the love of my life, hoping that one day he will agree to talk, and to listen what I have to say; also tell me all the things I didn’t allow him to tell me in my face, cause …. yes cause I left him via email. Terrible I know, but that’s how it went. He never forgave me, and he is over me now, I am pretty sure, although a big part of me still organises her life in view of a reconciliation.

Only love can help me chase away my ex love. I think. I miss love in my life, I am not used to live on my own; it sucks really. Plus I live in a very asocial country, among people that are used to very reserved lives. So I am on my own. It’s important for me to be good with myself, so that I can find the right person. Everybody will tell you that. If I am not happy, I will find unhappy people, or people who I content myself with, for lack of better option. It sounds mean, but it’s what happens. We project our state of mind to others,like a boomerang : watch what you are projecting, cause it will ricochet back to you with same intensity. I had that twice in the last 5 years. The first is the wrong guy for whom I left the right guy (W., the love of my life); the second one I met after I broke up with the wrong guy, and he was a bipolar depressive young man who I had fallen in love with, unable to rationally see how bad of an influence he had on me. Luckily after two years of yoyo, it ended. Like we say in Italian: “meglio soli che male accompagnati”: better alone than with bad company.

But it’s not fun to always be on your own, and I really suffer this. I don’t believe in apps, like Tinder, Bumble, etc. But I got to such a desperate point that I joined a couple of those. It’s funny, there’s one called “adopt a guy”, and you have a shopping basket, just like at Amazon, where you check out the guys you pick. What a consumerism… But funny enough I have interacted with some of these people and one caught my attention. I invited him to dinner at my place, without any commitment; no restaurants to go to, and in Switzerland people are very safe, also on Tinder… plus he does kiteboarding, which for me isa guarantee that he is a good guy. at least not a psychopath (then again, you never know). so, he came to my place and we had a nice dinner; we chatted for about 3 h and then I was hoping he would leave. I guess he understood that, and he said goodbye, hug and kiss on the cheek. Afterwards he writes me that he felt the agreable wish to kiss me and take me in his arms. This warmed up my heart; I don’t find him my type really, but the thought of being desired and thought odf made me feel good. Now I wait for his messages, and it feels good. I don’t know what will happen, but I am going to see him again.

I am very cautious though, because I don’t want to fall in love, and then have another case of non reciprocal love, or the fear that sex is bad, or that I won’t like him, or that I will like him more than I should. Most of all, the fear that I am seeking happiness in someone else, outside of myself. Is it bad? Is it wrong?