[Mouse_]

Also in fridays session I spoke about how I had arranged for a friend to come round to my home last wed evening. This friend and I have only recently reconnected, the last time we were active friends was when I was still drinking and crazy, well crazier then I am now and during my first yr sober.

I felt like I MUST be friends again and I MUST not keep avoiding her and and and! but I said to T that I dont want too, its nothing wrong with this woman its me I just don't like people at my home and prefer to go too their homes so I can leave when ready.

So my friend came and it was ok, sounds like I dont care here but I couldnt explain this any better. Even my son asked me how the evening went? and I said, I dunno, ok, but you know me I like my evenings to myself doing my own thing getting my pj's on and just, oh I dunno. The pain in my heart was heavy because I felt as if I must be the only person in the world like this and then in session I said how I hated sch, always wanted to go home and T said but when you were home you survived my running the streets? and said, even more confused and unable to express myself that yeah that was true but being at sch was more painful because the sound of laughter and chatter of so many people made me feel even more lonely inside. I see T's chest rise and fall as it sometimes does when she's trying to express how that makes her feel.

I said my friend coming round the other night just felt unesserary and I feel I have to do it and she asked why? I said because when I laugh at the phrase needing people I feel I'm doing something wrong by not needing people but I get what I want from my family, thats enought for me, my husband is also my best friend. T said when we talk about being in denial of our need for others she said I More or less meant as long as you are not in denian about what you need here from me? I replied, "oh no, I no I need you and my family, but it stops there and if therapy means I will eventually make lots and lots of friends then we can quit now coz I dont want that, I want to have a better relationship with myself and that is happening, but I'm not here so I can start running all over the world making friends"

So this stayed with me yesterday and I looked up scizoid and I felt like someone was talking about me, so much of said what I haven't been able to express, the appearing cold and indifferent to people but inside is a world of feeling and emotion but its inverted. How people like this this spend a long time in therapy before they reveal their true hidden fantasy world the prefer to live in, and even after therapy most do revert back to being loners. There is so much said that I was just eating up!! I felt as if I had been living a straight life and had finally come out off the closet and admitted to my sexuality, but this time I felt like I could finally say, hey its ok to be how I am, this is what I've felt inside for so many yrs but thought unless I make friends and do social activitys I'm only living half a life when I'm not, I am living a full life only in the way I choose to live it and that is what is important, I know T often says as long as thats a choice? and I've often felt, dam perhaps I'm in denial but I truely with all my heart feel as if I've been "found" the true core of myself is just how this descriptioin says. I am not crazy and its ok to be this way, and I just feel full of joy, I am content at last, I knew I was getting enought from my family and I'm happy with the one on one relationship with T and now I know why AA use to trigger me, its groups, its hearing to many people in one place.

The page on schizoid read said its thought this personality develops during the first yr of life is the mother/caregiver doesn't offer enought emotional simulation to the baby and my adoptive mother rarely lifted me out of the cot during my first yr, it all makes sense now, I dont care how I got this way because I am so happy with it, much like I have alwasy imagined someone who has been in denial about their sexuality must feel, who cares if it is because of a dominant mother and absent father or whatever the reasons sometimes suggested what matters is who I am NOW! and its me, thats how I am now and I love, its so freeing, finally I can let go all the inner turmoil of trying to go against my loner style, I don't have to force myself to be more sociable then I feel comfortable with and thats ok too!! I love the way I feel things inside of me out of the eyes of others, they may judge me as uncaring or selfish but they dont know, they dont know what I am inside what I feel or think!! a lady at work only the other week said I come over as flat. I did feel slightly hurt by this and for a about an hour tried to be more outgoing and then I stopped and thought, what are you doing? this woman had been talking and talking to me and I had been listening to her but forget that she doesn't see inside of me and wanted an expression of what I felt she was saying and when that didn't happened she immediately tought I was cold, indifferent, but Im not, I have plenty of love and understanding inside of me but thats where its going to stay! and I like it that way!! I feel validated by what I read, that we are not cold and uncaring, we do have a wealth of rich emotion accept its kept secret !!!

sorry for the long post, this mode of communication suits me down to the ground!!

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Mouse )))))))))))))))))))))))))))

It can be such a relief when we find something like that that helps us understand and forgive and accept ourselves. And I love that your post is entitled "joy!". We all need some more joy.

[Perna]

I don't know. My husband is my best friend but I'm his too, I had to be a friend and want to be a friend and actively act like a friend, etc. Yes your family is "enough" but some of that is because of the familiarity. It's very hard work to make and keep friends! True, my husband, and I suspect yours, don't feel like hard work but think back to when you met him and the first six months? I was anxious as all get out. I know when I had my six months because Tina Turner was singing "What's love got to do with it":

Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken

It may seem to you
That I'm acting confused
When you're close to me
If I tend to look dazed
I've read it someplace
I've got cause to be

There's a name for it
There's a phrase that fits
But whatever the reason
You do it for me

I've been thinking of a new direction
But I have to say
I've been thinking about my own protection
It scares me to feel this way

Did I tell you the story about how I hate being in other people's homes? I'm the opposite to you in that. But I finally figured it out in therapy, one of the last years, my stepmother, when we got married, had to drag me around with her because I was only 5 and so I was constantly being introduced to new "aunts" and cousins and left with them!

Nothing so scary as being left at someone else's house when you don't know them and don't know if someone's coming for you, etc.! My mother never "came back" for me; I lost track of her when they took her to the hospital when I was two. A two year old's #1 job is to keep track of their mother and I failed at that!

I could never understand why I didn't like to babysit, didn't like having to be in other people's homes until it all just connected up for me. That's where I felt lonely and knew I didn't belong, it wasn't "my" stuff and I was just "visiting" there. I suspect you don't want people in your home because it's too "close" like in the hospital where you were helpless. You don't want them in your "space"? If you're in theirs (or on the streets) you can run. But if they track you to your own lair, your own head, how will you get away?

[Mouse_]

Originally Posted by Perna

I don't know. My husband is my best friend but I'm his too, I had to be a friend and want to be a friend and actively act like a friend, etc. Yes your family is "enough" but some of that is because of the familiarity. It's very hard work to make and keep friends! True, my husband, and I suspect yours, don't feel like hard work but think back to when you met him and the first six months? I was anxious as all get out. I know when I had my six months because Tina Turner was singing "What's love got to do with it":

Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken

It may seem to you
That I'm acting confused
When you're close to me
If I tend to look dazed
I've read it someplace
I've got cause to be

There's a name for it
There's a phrase that fits
But whatever the reason
You do it for me

I've been thinking of a new direction
But I have to say
I've been thinking about my own protection
It scares me to feel this way

Did I tell you the story about how I hate being in other people's homes? I'm the opposite to you in that. But I finally figured it out in therapy, one of the last years, my stepmother, when we got married, had to drag me around with her because I was only 5 and so I was constantly being introduced to new "aunts" and cousins and left with them!

Nothing so scary as being left at someone else's house when you don't know them and don't know if someone's coming for you, etc.! My mother never "came back" for me; I lost track of her when they took her to the hospital when I was two. A two year old's #1 job is to keep track of their mother and I failed at that!

I could never understand why I didn't like to babysit, didn't like having to be in other people's homes until it all just connected up for me. That's where I felt lonely and knew I didn't belong, it wasn't "my" stuff and I was just "visiting" there. I suspect you don't want people in your home because it's too "close" like in the hospital where you were helpless. You don't want them in your "space"? If you're in theirs (or on the streets) you can run. But if they track you to your own lair, your own head, how will you get away?

Perna!! That Tina Turner song is so appropriate!!!