The expe­ri­ence of emo­tional depri­va­tion is harder to define than some of the other life­traps. Often it is not crys­tal­lized into thoughts. This is because the orig­i­nal depri­va­tion began so early, before you had the words to describe it. Your expe­ri­ence of emo­tional depri­va­tion is much more the sense that you are going to be lonely for­ever, that cer­tain things are never going to be ful­filled for you, that you will never be heard, never be understood.

Emotional depri­va­tion feels like some­thing is miss­ing. It is a feel­ing of empti­ness. Perhaps the image that most cap­tures its mean­ing is that of a neglected child. Emotional depri­va­tion is what a neglected child feels. It is a feel­ing of alone­ness, of nobody there. It is a sad and heavy sense of knowl­edge that you are des­tined to be alone.

I’m so fuck­ing angry­fu­ri­ous­livid at John right now. We were sup­posed to talk and play tonight, but yet again, I get brushed aside for his friends or girl­friend. I have no other com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him, save for the phonecalls.

It’s not just this time, it’s a whole bunch of times added up. And I’m left alone, again. This is the first time ever that he’s made me cry. And I’m not even sad. I’m just angry. I’m sweat­ing. I can barely see through these tears.

At least I found out that I could show my feel­ings to him. He’s the only per­son with whom I don’t have to worry about being polite. I can raise my voice at him, and I don’t clam up like I do with most people.

Right now, I have no one. John’s the one per­son I can count on to talk to me when some­thing goes wrong. No one else truly under­stands me. It’s com­pletely dev­as­tat­ing when it’s this per­son who pulls the rug out from under you.

Maybe I am sad. Maybe this makes me think of how I’m always a sec­ond pri­or­ity to every­one I know. That I’ll be alone for the rest of my life. That it’ll always be like this because I’m fuck­ing flawed and fuck­ing defec­tive and fuck­ing unlov­able in some way.

I wasn’t going to drive to nowhere tonight, but I think I will now. I just have to remem­ber not to rest my foot on the pedal.

People don’t under­stand how frag­ile I am. That some­times I have to fight to feel sig­nif­i­cant, that I have to con­vince myself that peo­ple would be sad if steered into a con­crete pole and died.

Just because I try to be easy-going and under­stand­ing doesn’t mean I’m not important.

I’m a per­son too.