| name | value |
| location | Melbourne |
| date | 2025-06-30 |
| dateFormat | dd-mmm-yyyy |
| slug | 2025June |
六月一日
If I don’t love you anymore, why do I still feel sad? It’s this feeling of loss. The loss of my love for you, the loss of our love, the loss of the version of you that I loved. But it’s okay. It will be okay.
The Sunday here in Mannheim is really quiet. It is at the same time painful and comforting. You aren’t here with me. You weren’t there with me. You won’t be with me anymore. I’ll get used to it. I will.
I’ve walked to a park. It is so quiet, the way here, and here. Inevitably I thought of our walks, oh those walks, I love them so much. I wish we spent all those hours fooling around on walks instead. Then I’d not have felt disconnected nor disappointed now. No use to regret now. I miss those walks. I miss us back then. But I must move on.
At train stations you get to see many people reuniting and saying goodbyes. Tears, laughters. Immersed in all these emotions surrounding me, the pain in my chest worsened a bit.
六月二日
Full of lies.
Unbelievable. Really unbelievable. How dumb do you think I am? I’m infuriated.
First of all, you didn’t keep your word again and it took you over two days to get in touch. We’ve talked about this, I was very upset.
Then you didn’t even acknowledge that. The texts are right there, you don’t need me to remind you.
You clearly haven’t thought about me at all, let alone my feelings, and now you just expect a simple fake „I miss you“ to make it look as if nothing has happened? The audacity!
Martha Nussbaum says whenever you hold yourself to any sort of IDEAL…any sort of standard of perfection…then SHAME…instantly becomes a PERMANENT possibility. That’s what does it. If you could accept that you make mistakes sometimes then you wouldn’t be so thrown off by not being perfect.
More than that…at the CORE of that feeling of shame…is a narcissistic mindset. It’s someone still trapped in that baby mode where you’re not thinking of anything but yourself…in this case your own driving reputation. Shame… is ALL about you. It’s all about this IMAGE you have of yourself…and OMG it got THREATENED here…what am I going to do? This is why the ANTIDOTE to shame Nussbaum says is just to RESTORE the kingdom of narcissism that you USED to be in where you have these impossible standards for yourself and you convince yourself you’re perfect again.
Now imagine the feeling you have is that you feel GUILTY…for making a mistake that messed with someone else’s life and could’ve hurt them.
That’s a VERY different FEELING to Martha Nussbaum. Because while shame is ENTIRELY self-focused…GUILT…has a BUILT IN acknowledgment of another person’s rights. If the way you fix shame is to convince yourself you’re perfect again…the way you fix guilt is often by paying reparations…by DOING something that makes things right between you and whoever it was that you hurt.
Now I finally understand why I always sensed something was wrong, when I heard you saying you felt shame. Whenever you didn’t apologise but said “I don’t like what I did triggers this and that in you”, it made me want to frown. Now I finally see. It is because you didn’t feel guilt, but only shame, stemming from your defensiveness of your self-image, your ego.
But when I do something that I think is wrong, I always feel guilt, as the immediate thought I always have is to make amends. I want reparation more than anything. To me there’s no restoration of my self-image because there simply does not exist one. I care only about if I have caused another person harm, and if so, I want to correct it, I want to compensate it. That’s the difference between you and me.
That is why, you don’t deserve me.
That is why, I am better off without you.
六月三日
My anger has subsided. Wrote a nice postcard and dropped it in the outgoing mailbox. Kept my promise but I should never go back.
六月五日
My heart is softened, embarking on the fond memories we made in the first two months. But everyday before that Thursday, and after the Monday, there was only pain and stress. Obscuring the future. I don’t see a future and don’t feel hope anymore. It’s pointless to make any more effort. The fact that you never messaged again, also makes it very clear that you knew things have gone wrong. Yet you still haven’t made any effort to acknowledge what you did, rather, failed to do, over the weekend. I don’t want you anymore. You’ve become a problem in my life. I am too jaded to solve things. Me solving things would probably make me more of a problem to you as well, which is the last thing I want.
六月六日
I don’t remember anymore what was in my dream, but my heart was filled with sorrow. I couldn’t take it anymore and started crying. I woke up crying, out of breath.
L sent an emoji, still no acknowledgement of last weekend. I don’t want to respond, but at the same time I feel sorry. But I shouldn’t be.
I ended up responding. He sent another. I responded again, with a broken heart.
六月十日
Nothing ever since. We’ve completely lost touch it seems.
六月二十五日
Strangers‘ kindness…
My breakdown started on the Sunday in Mannheim already. I was still trying to live the way I normally do, and went on for a long walk.
I must have looked very lost and distressed. A German man looked at me, took off his sunglasses, stopped by my side and asked me in English, are you lost, do you need some help? I told him I was fine and he walked away.
On my flight back to Melbourne I was also exhausted, by our phone call that you walked off in the middle of. I tried to just sleep through the hours and shut my brain off. The flight attendant offered me some snacks and drinks, gently tapped on my arm and said, just have dinner first then sleep later. In that moment I felt so cared for.