losing yourself

When I think about your daily life at home, you’re essentially an emotional servant to your family (much like me in mine in many ways), and you maintain that by cannibalizing your autonomy. This is why you feel you aren’t a person of your own, but rather your dad’s + sister’s accessory when they need you, and a working robot otherwise (either working for the wedding project or for your job, they’re similar from the perspective of how your mind feels about the responsibility)

The way to fix this is the emotionally painful path in your mind; choosing to be selfish against the needs of your family. The thing is it’s not true, it’s just how you see it and feel in your mind

Unfortunately it’s not that easy cuz your situation over time creates the problem you deal with: “who am I, what do I like, what do I want?”.

People can only figure out how to have fun if they don’t live to serve others, but people put themselves in the position of always serving others because they either think they’re evil/selfish and hate themselves or because they find it too hard to process their own deep feelings about regret, reinforcing the pattern of cannibalizing yourself to serve others

The really difficult and real issue you also face is that all your friends disappeared. *, **, ***, these are your closest friends right? Other than them, are there any you consider in the same bucket, and where are they/why you cant link them easily? * of the bunch is your best friend, but the reality is she doesn’t want to be here (this is evident by the fact that she chose to go all over the world and return plans are distant). As long as you’re not following her around, you won’t get to link her, and it doesn’t seem like you want to drop everything and travel the world.

In my opinion, one thing is you need more friends to replace the void that your childhood friends created when they all left. Without this, you are reliant on your dad, sister and me for happiness. You can rely on me ofc (and part of a healthy marriage is being a source of each other’s happiness), but it’s a temporary solution. 

You gotta find a **** or a ** of your own, or something like it. I don’t think any of your roomies fit the bill right now because you said you want something different (thus far only *+group had that). 

Find out what the magic sauce was (based on the merits of the friendship, not the fact that yall are all the same culture or all a family friend group that your parents put you into as a child). Friends from work? Old hs people? While you figure this out, you can have my friends and their wags (although we gotta think about how to facilitate that so you don’t feel like you’re my +1 but rather have your own connections)

It’s tough social circumstances you’re in, I’m sorry it’s not easy sweet baby :( but if you don’t have woman friends of your own, unconnected to your birth family, whom you can share the experiences of what life is like in your shoes, you’ll feel alone and even I won’t be enough to be that person for you eventually. I’m glad I have certain friends because when I face catastrophes with how my life is that my family is involved in or can’t understand my perspective, I can bring it up to certain friends, and there’s an immense feeling of relief when they reveal that they’ve been through similar. It seldom solves the problem, but without friends I would’ve offed myself at like 18 or 19 no exaggeration srsly. And you’re never too grown up to need friends. Not family, friends. I couldn’t deal with 2025 without friends, I certainly need them in 2026, and then the nature of life will change and I’ll need them once more.

Your happiest summer in life was 2022 and nobody but you will make you have a season like that again. * is out living a story for herself of her choosing, your other distant friends are doing similar. I’ll try to find your friends, but it’ll never work unless you do the acquaintance —> sorta friends —> friends transition. Even I don’t have all the sorts of friends that I want, I’ve hit a ceiling and I gotta find more or I’ll start losing friends over time. Nobody makes new friends in their 40s, we have 5ish years realistically before no more new friend-friends.