I do get extremely envious, because when someone is in a relationship they are with someone who cares about them (most of the time), the person they are with wants to spend time with them, go places with them, do things together, they buy them gifts, stand up for them, all of that stuff. I don't have that from anybody. I live alone, I haven't seen my father in 2 years and see my mother approximately 10 minutes once a fortnight because she buys me a bus ticket. If she didn't do that I wouldn't see her at all either. They were only together for 3 months and broke up. My mother chose alcohol and drugs over me, when I moved out at 17 I didn't even have a bed to sleep on, and no money to buy anything, and was completely alone for months at a time, and she was totally fine with that because she was able to have her beloved alcohol and drugs without me in the way.
When my grandfather beat me when I was 15, my entire family, other than my mother, took his side and made excuses for him.

All the rejection and coming off second best I think hugely shapes how I feel about myself, and it affects how I feel about relationships because no matter what relationship was around me, whether it directly involved me or not, I was never the important one, I was the one in the way. So that feeling of standing alone and having overwhelming envy while watching someone in a relationship is something that happens to me all the time now, to the point I can't handle looking at a picture of 2 people together without feeling that way.

The thing with a lot of it is, I don't even KNOW how I feel about a lot of things. I don't even know when I like someone now. I might be adamant I'm not attracted to someone but still keep getting a little bit of 'that' feeling, I might not realise until quite a while afterwards that I like them (when I spent a month in California there was a guy with us that I had a little bit of feelings for, then the panic set in and I was sure I didn't like him at all anymore, and then when I came back home, months later I realised that yes, I did actually like him, I think...). There is someone that I'm friends with who is definitely the kind of guy I would be looking for, and I used to think he was okay, but now that I see him all the time I don't like him as anything more than a friend... It's all so confusing for me. Sometimes I don't know if I DO like someone and I am just blocking the feelings, and sometimes I don't know if I genuinely DON'T like someone as more than a friend and I'm just wishing I did.
When a male friend gets into a relationship the feeling is almost like betrayal, like I'm thinking 'WHAT?!'.
Because I never manage to really talk about this with anyone or think too in depth about it, this is something I haven't really advanced in recovering, I'm still trying to completely work out what I'm actually feeling and where it all stemmed from. Obviously I'm aware or some stuff, but other things I'm literally only realising as I type.
One thing I think I might actually end up coming to terms with in the future is the subconscious wish of having a good family as I was growing up and having a really great father. I have had no father and no positive male influence. I could not name to you ONE male influence- whether it is my father, grandfather, uncles, families partners- that wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic or abuser or neglectful. Sometimes I see a father, while I'm shopping for example, and he quite obviously has a great relationships with his kid/s, and I can feel something inside that really hurts me. There is something in there that really makes it painful for me, but I'm so used to NOT having a father that I can't completely tell what that feeling is. It's like, I wish that was my father, and I just want to run away and cry. But at the same time, the feeling is really reserved, like it's there, but I can't quite feel it. Perhaps because nobody's ever asked me 'do you want a father?' 'do you wish you had a father who protected you and was a FATHER to you and didn't drink?'. My real father sells drugs and drinks and tells me I'm selfish and don't appreciate anything and sent me messages in the middle of the night that I was a drama queen and the biggest wimp he ever met because I couldn't cope with a job I was pushed into. My father FIGURE beat me and is a racist (even though he denies it) and is an alcoholic with a temper. I was so used to that I don't think I even realised I what I did want. But now it's too late, I'm 22, I've lived by myself for 5 years, I don't need parents anymore. I never even had them to begin with. And it's only beginning to hit me now that I wanted that.

With the Vision Board thing, I have in the past written down a list of things that came true. I made a thread about it months ago, that I'd come across something I'd written down when I was 17 while going through some old diaries, which was a list of things 'that will happen to me within the next 5 years'. Funnily enough I completely forgot about it and came across no less than 5 years later- and every single thing on the list came true. My list was 'get my own home, study animal care, go overseas, get a blue sofa'. I did end up in my own home, and I'm still here, I studied both Animal Studies and Companion Animal Services, I got a sponsorship to California, and m grandparents gave me their couch which was blue. The fact that all that happened, when I was being abused and neglected and was so poor I couldn't even eat when I wrote it, just seems so extreme. If I had known then that it all would actually happen...

I have written another list, but I am trying to forget the list the way I did last time, I don't want to THINK about the list or what's on it or the time I put on it, I just want to forget all about it and let it happen now. I won't talk too much about my list.