I'm hypersensitive to others' treatment of me, I tend to overextend myself to help people close to me and I resent it when those efforts are taken for granted, and I suffer severe mood swings even under medication. Once in a long while I will freak out in a manner that most have never witnessed. It's a certified miracle that I have never been arrested.

Aside from friends from my past with whom I have occasional brief contact, very rarely in person, I have only two people on the island whom I consider friends, and each has character quirks or contradictions that challenge me constantly. I remember that my mom, who died 10 years ago, would go through months-long periods where she wouldn't talk to one or another of her closest friends, and although I don't claim to have learned that behavior, I may well have inherited the temperament that fostered it.

If I meet someone new and they give any indication that they will not treat me with the kindness and respect that I have for them, I will avoid them. Nothing that they can offer me is worth the possible consequences of the stress derived from my interaction with them.