IVORY TOWER

  Yesterday, you helped me to understand where I am at. You told me that you appreciated & understood my analysis. I am grateful that you told me. I took a massive risk, & although I told myself that it did not matter if Lisa decided to reject me on the strength of it, it clearly did. I am aware of this fear of rejection that I possessed for so long. I had a fear of rejection from those I wanted to be around. Never feeling worthy of love & affection from those I wanted it from. So I would end up with those that would, & did, cause me harm. So I enhanced my educative skills & made my mind strong so that I could be in control of whoever came into my life. But those I liked would not come because they did not live in my world. It was an anomaly to them, & disturbed them. This would enable me to justify that I was in the right, so the good never came, just the bad, so when they left it was not such a drama. My knowledge & material things, my abilities, I have used to protect me from rejection. This clearly came from my parents breaking up, & being torn, like you, from a secure & happy childhood environment & ,naturally, losing Nathan. This fear of rejection did not allow me to live in the world that others inhabit. An ivory tower is where I lived, for I was too afraid of being rejected, hurt or humiliated, by those who could not inhabit such heady places. Emotional maturity is what I am describing. It is something that I have found incredibly difficult to embrace, due to what I have been through. Like narcissism, I have hidden behind a mirror so as not to be hurt by love or intimacy. Of course, this attracted to me all sorts of problems, namely, terrible loneliness, & relations with others that were dysfunctional. After a while I just stayed alone, isolated, surrounded by books & information only. People were not good for me, just material things. When I did venture out to I chose to work with rich Arabs, Pop stars, etc, the type that are also distance from the `normal` world. These days I am embracing & owning my confidence & being honest with myself. For example, I no longer care about what others think of me because I feel worthy of having what I want. Like you, I do not blame my Mother, I accept that she does not possess the confidence to live according to how she would really like to live. I am finding that I am making valued & reasoned decisions that are enhancing my life now. As your kind & thoughtful email proved to me yesterday I am now beginning to exhibit signs of release & honesty within my life. I can provide for myself a living & I do possess skills that enable me to make a valued contribution to society, & be fully functioning in the world, whereas before I did not feel confident that I had such personal attributes. It is a slow walk back, & Carl Jung called this period I have been through, `The Long Night Of The Soul`. What he means by this analogy, is an individuals  confrontation with their Shadow; the dark, repressed side of every persons personality & psyche. And to find total individuation & autonomy, a person must go through ,what is commonly known as, a depression. Once one finds their way back, they know they can begin amalgamating the parts into somet