[WendyAussie]

I fear relationships. Doesn't take Einstein to work out why. I have been abused, neglected, rejected all in childhood and then again in adulthood due to mental illness (which of course partly came about due to my childhood!! lol).

I was just in a session with my therapist and I told her that just before I went, I watched Good Will Hunting on pay TV. I've seen it a gazillion times but never tire of it. I know when I watch it I will basically cry from start to finish, but my meds stop my crying so a good cry is always a good thing for me.

The reason the movie moves me is because it's about the necessity to take emotional risks, even if you have been battered again and again and again by life and people. You're only really in the game of life if you're taking emotional risks. I know that to be true, but it's so dam hard to put into practice. The last two years have seen me move towns to where my large extended family lives and extend myself again and again and again to them. But they have roundly rejected me due to my mental illnesses.

It's a very ugly thing - these are Catholic, Sunday Church going people but they can't extend themselves to a suffering person who only wants to have a cup of tea with them and to whom I have done no damage or hurt whatsoever. I am not asking them to help me with mental illness, just be good mates and offer mutual support.

I made a formal separation from immediate and extended family in December and this is very bitter, but I now see that I have genetic relatives in this world, but in my heart and in my head, and in the daily reality of life, I have no relatives at all.

So I'm in a very tenuous time now, when I know I MUST keep my heart open to allow the love that IS out there (in the world if not in my family). But I am obviously very gun-shy about taking emotional risks as I have been battered against the rocks too many times. And then there's the idea of meeting a nice man - well that's a WHOLE other story!! lol