Hi BadWolfC: Your post touched a chord with me. (I'll just mention, for reference, that I'm an older person.) But, like you, I have also lived all of my life with great fear & have never felt safe around people. (Nowadays I simply keep to myself.) And I have also always had the feeling that something must have happened to me at a very young age that caused me to be the way I am. But I have no firm idea what that might have been. (Well...I do have one possible idea. But I don't know to what extent it is real or if it might have been the cause. And there's no one left to ask about it anymore.)

I also don't think I ever was normal. In fact, I know I wasn't. But way back when I was growing up mental illness was something to be frightened by & ashamed of. Plus there was little or no help available anyway. So my troubles were simply dismissed (and sometimes punished) as bad behavior. Plus, I learned, at a very early age, I don't know how, that there were things about myself I must never talk about with anyone. And so I kept them a closely guarded secret literally for decades. (By the way, whenever I have tried to talk about a lot of this, I have also always had difficulty putting it into any kind of understandable language.) I've given up trying at this point in my life.

There was a time, a few years ago, I went through a relatively short period where I thought maybe I could finally figure things out. But when I stuck my head out of the closet, so to speak, I found no one wanted to hear it. As it had been my whole life, the expectation was that I would simply resume playing the role I had always played regardless of the toll it might be taking on me to do so. And so that's what I've done. I've come to the conclusion that, at least in my case, how I ended up becoming the person I am is a gnarled ball of wire that will never be untwisted. It all just is what it is. So I strive to accept it all... with compassion. I hope that, in your case, you can find the answers you seek.