LV: ‘What would you do if T…..(partner) said now, he wanted to live the rest of his life with you – move in with you?’

Me: ‘I would be terrified and emotionally run away’.

LV: ‘Why?’

Me: ‘Because I am as afraid of love as he is and see that he has the same faults as me, but can’t handle it in myself, and even less in someone else, because it is too painful to see.’

LV: ‘Then you have to handle it within yourself first – overcome it in yourself and then it won’t bother you in others. Where does it come from?’

Me: ‘The people I loved totally, totally let me down – Mum: overpowering, manipulative, and the cause of my ‘foreign’ ness – using what I told her against me, cutting me off from friends, knowing we were in a small village, and I had no transport. All transport had to be ‘earned’ (‘be good, and I will drive you’). She had no time for me – only transporting me reluctantly, so I stopped asking …
Dad: absent, engrossed in his own projects, and my brother: away in a boarding school.’

LV: ‘So, Love = deception, but you still run after it. Why?’

Me: ‘I don’t know – I don’t understand. … Because society says you ‘MUST HAVE’ ? … Because I have so much to give, and keeping it in, kills me, like keeping poison inside?’

LV: ‘Can you give it to yourself?’

(I couldn’t answer…)