[Lefty_Mac]

For 25 years of my life - and this topic can be seen on my blog, it turned out that besides having many drug addictions I've had ''friends'' who were all interconnected with this - and music. Bandmates. Truth is, I've only had three girlfriends my entire life and never a sexual relationship with anyone else. I had to lie, mimicking my father, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, but also destroyed the lives of my entire family, me, my brother (who deemed to be a bastard son when he had his outbreak while spoiling me and doing everything in the world to make me hate my mother, who he deemed to be a *****, who also plotted and slept with his co-workers - and then eventually his other girlfriends too after she divorced him in 1986), who acts as the most honest man in the world yet is a misogynist, only sleeps with prostitutes nowadays - and ''so did I''.

Nope. It was all to fit in with this group of people who judge me as the ''freak of the 'gang''' ''loser'', ''druggie'', ''sucker'', anything bad you can find - unless I had my talents in music (keyboards/sax/bass, which I can't play anymore due to a bad junk shot in my right arm, and my voice, which I lost due to excessive smoking and untrained decades of screaming) or drugs, or money for drugs, or anything that was in their interest - they never wanted to know about me and the way I felt, and left me flat when I didn't have any of those things.

So after years of being misdiagnosed and being a lab rat for drug dealers (i.e. psychiatrists) with a new psychiatrist, a therapist, research on the internet and in books, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder. It took weeks for me to open an email from my shrink with a pdf of a book about the subject, and I've been crying for three months, and in the last one and I half, I'm still bedridden with windows shut, without eating anything, reaching for help anywhere I could (until I found here) because when I asked them for help ( my so-called friends, they didn't pay attention, and when finally questioning their friendship, they literally told me to f- off.

For the last six days I've been having a turbulence of emotions, mainly anger, and feeling of loss because I've cut contact with them FOR GOOD, sending them a nice farewell message. Yesterday was the first time I started reconnecting with the world with a childhood friend who isn't part of that contingent. He understood me. Before I spent two days without sleeping, smoking like a chimney, crying, ovbermedicating myself to deal and cope, feeling happy/sad/angry/alone/anything you can think of. Then a person who I admire who was born in the same day and year as me helped me, if only indirectly, with an article about making new friends on her site that I follow on facebook. It was when my hopes began to raise up, and from yesterday to today, I finally slept nicely anow I feel free, and willing to find new friends.

The problem is that I don't know how to do that very well....if at all. It will take years of therapy to recover from the trauma I lived, and even with that article, the books and everything, I feel trapped. I can't interact with people.

But one thing's for sure - I'm free.

[kaliope]

hi lefty
you can certainly find friends here. try the chat rooms or games. you can get to know people there. great places to reach out. take care.

[glok]

Hello, Lefty_Mac. I commend you for beginning the process of achieving a better life. Change is difficult and challenging. I think you understand that.

I wish you well.

[Nat92]

I'm glad you got out of all that, that you're now free. The first step is always to realize what's wrong, seeing what you want to change. You have a very long way ahead of you and it sure as hell won't be easy at all.

As demotivational as it may sound, you'll be starting all over but perhaps it's the change you need? You've gone through a lot, I'm sorry for that.

The ones you call your "friends" aren't truly even close to being that to you, so I'd advice you to just shut the door for them. I've started to go by the "what's doing you no good, has no place in your life" - weed them out.

You need to let in the light, bit by bit if possible. What happened to you in the past, is in the past, you need to leave it there and get back up, embrace the bit of light you let in.

Get up early one day, draw back the curtains and take a nice bath, ditch your old breakfast and try something new.

For me, it's the tiniest things in my day that makes me smile. Even if it seems trivial to some, it's what I hold on to. People often look at me weird, just because I smile brighter than the sun.

Their looks however don't make me stop.

It's incredibly hard to believe anything will change, but that's because you're holding yourself back. You have all these negative events, the trauma, the sadness, the pain - to render any change possible. Why could it get better?

Well, YOU can make it better.

I don't have any experience whatsoever with drugs, perhaps only my own sadness, which sorta worked like a drug.

But a will stronger than iron, stronger than titanium, can help you pull through anything. If your will isn't strong, I'd suggest building it up. Saying no, standing up for yourself, telling yourself you can do it, challenge yourself to doing better day by day.

I believe in you.

In regards to being social, making friends, new connections - it's all about being yourself, again challenging yourself. Say hello to a stranger, perhaps smile back at a person.

Make random conversation with a person at Walmart, even if you get nothing back, it's the effort that counts.

It probably all sounds cliche, but I've found that often people smile back and that makes it worth it.

It's your life, only you can make the change, if you want to.

[Lefty_Mac]

I am haphazardly coping with the fact that I'm starting from scratch when it's very much probable that I won't last long. But I've never been happier to get rid of all these people, it's as if my past simply doesn't exist. All joyful memories that I may have had with them now seem to pass through a ''filter'' in my head and turn to utterly disgusting memories. I love music, but not the music as heard and played with them, which is nice cos it seems that when I'm hearing my usual stuff it seems I'm listening to something new. And drugs? I don't even think about them anymore; I'm not suppressing the thoughts, I'm trying to deal with them, but the memories I have with drugs amount to a minus zero. Perhaps you guys would like to take a look at my site. Very important things, positive things are all there.

[Fuzzybear]