It's a Lonely Place....

We still are considering moving but for now will try and be where we are at. There's no money to move but there needs to be some change long-term.  Defining how to change things sometimes can be a struggle. We have discussions about trying to find new social circles to other ideas. I am stumped for now, but inside feel the grief.

I miss having people to talk to. In my old community I had some. I felt like I could be me. I think of the woman [me] who was brave enough even to have an art show that bordered on an "outsider" art show. Included in it even were some comics. That was me. When I was in my church of the past, I weighed even more but people talked to me. I was invited to dinners, the pastor's wife would talk to me, here I was in a church for a year and befriended someone who lived an hour away. That would be the only person in the church who would talk to me. I remember the times of prayer and being able to share things without cold judgments. I was able to explore scripture and ask questions while the churches here, the pastors all rule with an iron fist and seem to like Kim Jong II of North Korea to allow as little free conversation as possible. This means no bible studies where you talk about your own life, but ones directed with no questions allowed.

Something about this place ebbed my confidence away. I'm not sure what happened. More illness? Our descent into poverty? We had times of poverty in my old town too, but there I was still a person, here I am not. I have felt like I am dying on the vine here. I feel like a nobody here. I never wrote about this but I even threatened to move without my husband circa 2008 because I felt like I was reliving the moves of childhood. I couldn't take this place, the rejection I faced put me in the same place I was with the family. One realizes when people think you have something important to say and when you become invisible. I had enough of the invisibility with my family.

Some say the geographical cure isn't always the answer and I understand, but there seems to be no one to talk to here. I even told my husband I miss having people who I can talk to, even the day to day conversations I used to have even with acquaintances are missed. This place turned me into a silent cipher, was it shame for the poverty in the sea of wealth? Was it more provincial, wealthier people who judged me more harshly and who made me feel like nothing? Was it the lack of independent thinkers? Was it my hearing ebbing away? They seem less connected with each other then my last community too. I don't think it's just me. Somehow I found some community in days past even dealing with the same houseboundness and disabilities. Maybe I got older. Maybe I got sadder from being wrenched away from more people again. With enough losses your heart shuts down. You think, "I just see the back end of everyone anyhow why bother?" 

Maybe narcissism and coldness grew in society too.  Around 5 years ago, I started becoming afraid of people, I knew I was not succeeding socially here whatsoever. My social anxiety has grown to heights it hasn't been in 20 years. I never have been a social butterfly, but people at least used to talk to me. I wasn't seen as just a weirdo and a freak. I could share opinions and feel listened to.  Even being an Aspie, people would listen to me.

Here my self help group is nice to me, well after the project friend and her pet narcissist cleared out, but one thing I have noticed about this area is so many people complain of being lonely here. They feel adrift here. They are sad. I reach out to who I can but others leave too a lot. You can tell even they are clearing out for greener and happier pastures. This is a place where there is no community. We even had a friend leave here before after living here a year saying the people were strange and snobbish and no one talked to him. He even decided to deal with a commute rather then living too alone. He still commutes an hour to work to avoid this place. I would consider living in his town if it wasn't taken over by tourists even more so, and devoid of medical care.

It's weird to live in a place and to know you can sit downtown for hours and if you talk to someone it's probably a tourist, so that doesn't work either. We try. You are friendly, you try to be open, you love taking an interest in people, it goes nowhere. It's strange how in one small town more people will talk to you while in another larger but still technically "small" town, everyone has a million relatives around and the same friends since high school, and they don't want any new ones!

 You sit in the park with your husband nodding and saying hello to the blank-faced. One day we meet someone in the park who is friendly and talking to us, I think "That is nice, someone from here is talking to us!" She is young, but then I realized she is drunk. She asks me if I want sip of her vodka, I am tempted to take her up on her offer. The sober normals just aren't that friendly. What was I thinking?

My husband used to have family here, they all died or moved away. This is where he was born. One cousin who was adopted skulks around the neighborhood gas stations buying drugs. We run into her at random times. Her aunt who died acouple years ago, disinherited her. My husband had no relationship with the aunt who hated his father but once she came to visit us at a local restaurant and the temperature went down by 20 degrees when she entered the room. She got angry at me that I was not a Lutheran and basically told my husband he had no business marrying a non-Lutheran. We never saw her house or her again. She definitely was a narcissist.

The cousin who pops up from time to time is a drug addict. I was so lonely I invited her over to dinner once, thinking "I'll be careful." She didn't show up. Drug addicts aren't dependable. She has nothing to do with us but we run into her from time to time. Hey we have no money so what does she need us for? We drove up to get some gas, and I didn't even recognize her as she sat on the gas station stoop. My husband said hello to her and says "How are you doing?". She shouts. "I'm doing what I want!"

We were at the local art fair, and her golden child wealthy brother who comes back "home" from Texas, shows up and recognizes my husband, they are first cousins and he hasn't seen him in 15 years. He shakes his hand and walks away. This place is weird.

You don't fit in your community where you at least felt like you had a place in another. The "found families" break up far faster then the evil family that rejected you. Even with my doctor having her smiling face wrenched away from me for a new critical man, I probably am going to have to appeal to have replaced felt like a loss. Imagine being housebound, you want a friendly face, not someone who is upset by everything you say. If it's not different on the next visit, I'm calling for a replacement. It disturbed me already he did not want to test a hormonal thing I wanted tested.

Some may ask, "Why don't you go back home then?" I can't. The town died economically. Even doctors left and my medical needs are greater. Sadly people there die young even from the diminished medical care and resultant poverty. I already have outlived two people who died younger then me.  At least 5 people I knew there died. My old church is gone as well as another place I was part of and volunteered with. I sometimes consider it throwing caution to the wind. You have to know that. I want to be talked to again. For that alone, it would be worth it. We came here for survival reasons to begin with.

I listened to my narcissistic mother who told me and my husband we should stay, when he lost his job here. We shouldn't have but what other choice did we had? I didn't know about narcissism when she mocked me for my attachment to "Hooterville", her sarcastic name for my old town. We stayed mostly because of money and my husband having no work in my old town. While he works online, much free-lance employment is local based too.

For years I felt I had an unlived life back in my old town but I gave this place a chance too. I never got over this. I know it makes people upset with me. Remember I am an Aspie we need a continuance of place. My husband even in recent years, has apologized to me. "I should have never ripped you away from there". Maybe I got tired of constant losses and disappointments.

I feel something happening to me I do not like. I miss who I used to be. My confidence is shot. I almost feel catapulted back into high school days. Does that make sense? I don't want to make the effort here because I do not see it paying off. With the project friend, even there, that was someone I cared about who just turned out to be a raving wolf with no real attachments to anyone else and that is going to take me a long time to get over. Maybe people who don't "need" anyone and have had a full dance card their entire lives in one way just don't give a crap.

In my old town, I was still housebound and very sick at that period of life but I felt like I could still talk to people. I felt like in 1999, I had finally found "home", only to be wrenched out by 2007.

While I have my close college and online friends, I don't want to die alone with no local friends and no place of belonging and if I am realizing there are no friends to be had here or even a place to belong, why the hell am I here then? There's no place to grow. I can see even my husband is lonely outside of our own relationship here. It's hard one thing that makes it complicated is we have one of the best apartments here we ever have lived in. They fix things and it's quiet. We need hope and something to aspire to. We have each other but it's scary having no close friends living by you. Sometimes people do need others. The sad thing is it's such a beautiful place, but a damn lonely one.

I want to get my confidence back. I want to feel like I can talk to people again. I'm not sure how to make this happen but I am working on it and thinking about what needs to be done to have it happen. We are afraid of making another mistake. We know one misstep and we could be homeless. Moving when you have bad credit too [we always have kept rent paid on time] is far more risky. Right now the lack of money is making the decision for us, but I am thinking of the future. I will take time deciding what to do but am thinking carefully about these issues.