Hi GoGo2. I do understand that your advice is right, and agree that it is best for me to cease correspondence with my old psychiatrist. I must say that you don't know the whole story to this, since you're new here and don't know me. This doctor I write about has not been my psychiatrist since May 2021. Before that, I had been having video sessions with him since March 2020 when there was a covid shutdown in my native New Jersey. I haven't seen him in person since then (two years). I moved to Europe in January 2021, which means I had video sessions with him from across the Atlantic Ocean for five months, until I found a psychiatrist and therapist in my new country. Prior to that, I went to him in person for ~14 years. I knew him even before that, as he was my psychiatrist during my first psychiatric hospitalization about 15 years ago. He's been with me for nearly my whole journey through the worst of my mental chaos. However, now he's almost just a memory. We haven't said goodbye. We may never have a proper closure. I likely won't see him again.

The "love letters" are perhaps not what you're thinking about, and yet they sort of are. There are no "I love you's" written directly. Only indirectly, and perhaps maybe only on my side, though he obviously cares a lot. He was surely a substitute for the parent(s) I no longer have. And a man of awe, to boot. I met him only 6 months after unexpectedly losing my mother to cancer.

I only have a couple close relationships in life. He was number 2 after my husband. It's not easy for me to truly love and trust, but when I do it is deeply. That doctor always listened to me and knew me only a bit less than my husband, when few others do at all. It's true that his caring maybe crossed a minor line, but was never blatantly inappropriate. Perhaps I seemed a daughter to him, or someone he yearned for in his life. Definitely my affection was a draw. No, not physical affection. The other kinds.

I have a new life abroad, barely speaking the local language, not understanding or fitting in the culture, no longer owning a home like I did or feeling anything here is "mine", feeling more disabled in various senses. Barely anyone to talk to besides my husband and people here at Mysupportforums.org, even though I love to communicate. Feeling a bit trapped and very impatient to truly start a new life. Wishing the pandemic was finally gone. Working hard as hell to maintain mental stability. I'm doing OK, considering, but often I just want to go home. Not even to my old home country. Just home, wherever that may be. Home. A place that learns to know me and for me to feel a part of.