Today's Angst

I could use some hope in this life instead of just waiting for the next. God doesn't seem to be answering my prayers lately. I am not sure why. While God sends other people endless grandbabies and new opportunities, life for me is going nowhere. I even prayed about moving from here again. Were the ants all over my apartment floor last night a sign to leave? Who knows? Anyhow my life seems devoid of spiritual direction.

My relationship with God is being severely tested. You know things are wrong when you are praying prayers at 4am begging God to send you some hope and justice in this world. Even there, I have to be careful and keep my mouth shut, because the spiritual abusers of the world will glom on to your misery. They will tell you that you are a spiritual mess due to some evils and sin within you and like the narcs will tell you everything is your own fault and that God has refused His blessings because you are a "bad" person.   During one sermon at my old church, that pastor preached that God would bless you if you obeyed Him. What of a Christian this does not happen to?

Then there's some guy who posted on the ostracized article that I should go get revenge and stop being a wimp--I'm paraphrasing but even there I wonder why the narcissists continue to prosper and I sink lower. I'm not into jail cells and going to hell. The church world will pat you on the head and tell you "God is in control" making you feel like everything is your fault even more. So you mean it's God rewarding the narcs while life gets harder and harder for the rest of us? I hope not.

 I was born again 14 years ago and remember the hope and energy of that time. I believe my relationship with God kept me alive years past where I would have not been. I have prayed to God to send some real people around me locally or at least show me where to go. I meet them all the time online but real life seems a social wasteland. Aren't Christians supposed to witness and be a shining light? One wants their life to have some meaning.

It's not a good feeling if you just feel like you are going through the motions and you wonder if you will wake up in hell because you hate humanity.

So much of the Christian world is completely family oriented. If you have no family, they make you feel like you are a bad Christian. I'd move back to my old church if was still open. That was a real church family. Where does a Christian fit in that never had any children and whose entire family hates them?  My niece isn't writing me anymore. Queen Spider killed that relationship successfully. While she had her entire family there for her, her entire life, she took everyone away from me. Why does it seem like she always wins? Why do all obey her without question?  God needs to help me out here. It seems odd, that God couldn't intervene just once to give me some hope. Why would God want me to be spiritually destroyed dealing with all this garbage?

I'm not made of stone. I love all my nieces and nephews but wanted that niece especially in my life. This hurts me of course. I can't tell if I am too easily hurt and need to toughen up or if I am just dealing with cold people who have no feelings. Of course I am so used to be told how I feel is wrong, I'm scared to feel anything. Why are all these people so cold?

I seem to be dealing with some severe grief I cannot fathom. I thought it would lift with time but it doesn't seem to be. This may be territory for the counselors. Maybe I am not grieving only the lost of my family which never existed in the first place but all my other losses in this life. I have fought serious health problems for many years and now I am tired.

Obviously my life did not go very well. I even feel grief over things that happened to my husband. I am worried about him too. I am worried about other friends as well.  I'm not sure why so much of it is welling up. I even had this weird thought that I wish I could go to local grief counseling. I had some friends die a few years ago, but it feels deeper then that. Too many losses? Fear of more? There is a deep sadness I can't even explain, a mixture of deep, deep disappointment and grief. Is my No Contact failing? Did I make my life worse with it? I knew a price of going NC could be losing every family member. How is one supposed to deal with an entire family who hates you and doesn't care if you live or die? What if you are failing to do what makes no contact successful which is living our own life in the best way you can?

At this point, it seems if life had some fairness or justice, it seems just about now would be the time I would win the Lotto, but that is the stuff of dreams that never come true.  Real Life is Disappointment. Real Life is looking forward to stuff that never happens. Adult life sucks. No one tells you it sucks to get old. Is that too dark? Yes inside I am screaming at myself already for being like this and telling myself to "get it together". I worry about writing another angst filled article here. Yes I am depressed and yes I have tried to pull myself out of it. Daily I do just to get out of bed.  I tell myself life could be worse, and I could be homeless or without a husband or any friends but then I just feel more guilty. I try to focus on the small pleasures to keep from going insane, but I'm not sure what to do in general. Even while writing this article my computer did a Mini-Dump. I always feel like everything is going to fall apart.

I am going deaf. It is worsening. I can't hear anyone. I am often confused. I am sending out an application with a fee I could barely afford for a Digital hearing aid. Digital hearing aids are for the wealthy and I will never be able to afford one if I am turned down by this charity. I went to a hearing impairment club in my town, it was full of all these people who could hear far better then me and had the finances to buy digital hearing aids worth tens of thousands of dollars and cochlear implants. Don't I have enough to cope with? Who do you talk about going deaf to as an adult? Why do I always have problems there seems to be no answers for or one has to be wealthy to get answers?

I hate where I live. Its beautiful and has many offerings but the people here scare me. They are too closed-mouth, too upper class, and  too rejecting. Never, never make the mistake I did and move away from an area when you are near middle-aged. Don't do it. You will be buying yourself a lonely old age.  Past a certain age, and especially if you are an Aspie and disabled you will not be able to make any new friends. It's too hard. I have many good friends online and long distant but I still desire to know people locally.  People by their 40s have their social circles already set. I have run out of ideas. We have had many discussions about what to do. Both of us see and recognize the severe isolation. My husband says he is worried most about our survival but I worry about our spirits.

I see no opportunity in meeting anyone new here. I've already done the book club circuit, the art classes, churches, etc. Healthwise my energy is very limited.   I can't seem to get close to anyone here unlike my old community. Permanent acquaintances can be nice, but you remain a stranger to everyone. There are no eccentrics or non-richy rich artists here. Even going downtown to sit on a bench, you just meet tourists who aren't from here. I and my husband sit on park benches and have no friends. It is very sad. There's no one to talk to. We feel constantly judged here and found wanting. I can't seem to get an actual life together here. As an Aspie it never has been easy especially while being disabled.

Anyhow that said, why do they have senior centers for the old to socialize but nothing for the younger disabled? We are lonely too. In some ways we need a place to go more then the old do. The senior centers should allow the permanently disabled to join their ranks. The one here does not.

 Before I got sick last week, I actually ran crying into the bathroom and yelled at my husband, "Remember when they gave us a party at my old church to say goodbye?" "Remember when we had my art show and a goodbye party there too? We had some people actually notice we were alive there!" Most of the time while I'm pouring problems out here, around here I have to hide them, and appear like I have it "together". The classism here is severe. I feel like a "nobody" around here. They never fail to remind me of my invisibility.

Moving here destroyed my life, I have not felt right since we moved here. It was eight years ago. We hoped for a better future only to have it taken away. Yes there is more medical care and better restaurants but it feels dead here for me. Even after I gave it a chance, more disappointment came like with that betraying ex-friend. She may even still read this blog but I know now it is an absolute fact she has no empathy for other people.

I know something has been harmed in me simply by moving too much. I have no roots. I have nowhere that feels like "home". There's no there "there". Even my narcissist parents ripped me away from my communities as a child over and over.  One move was at the age of 7 and then another at the age of 13 to entirely new states. I never had a family who loved me and now I have no place I really belong. Nothing worse could happen to a person. So wonder I have no place of belonging.  I was a throw-away and forgotten about. Being the new person too many times, destroys one's life. Also when you have several friends die, the moorings get thrown over board too. I meet people and they have these close social networks, family who are there for them. I do meet others in my boat online but I never do in the real world. The real world seems to dance where they all know and have each other.

A close college friend and me discuss this all the time. How we were ripped away from friends and others over and over, to the point nothing could be depended on. I told her, the move when I was 13 almost ruined me. The abuse was bad enough that I faced but I always was ripped away from my friends and places and people of refuge. She told me she felt the same way too. I told her, all the moving as an adult was usually done for economic necessity but it wasn't worth it because it never fixed those problems either. Of course in some cases, we had to move or be homeless when work was totally erased. We both agreed we would have been happier in the old days when people moved less. Even here some people left I had gotten to know.

This is going to sound very sad, but one reason we have not moved this time yet, is we have not decided yet where to go. Where can two poor, middle aged, one disabled and the other with severe health problems move to and have some sort of life? We have no money to move. We have no energy to move. Neither one is in shape to pack and move things.

One wants to feel like they belong somewhere. One wants to have friends and a place of meaning. One wants to feel like there is something to look forward to. One wants to be around people who care and just don't throw you away. We are poor and struggle as you all know.  We have to survive which may mean holding on to this apartment. When your credit is toast and you are not employed in the traditional manner in my husband's case, even being able to rent a new place could be impossible.  While we want to survive, I feel trapped. I keep revisiting the time we decided to move here, and realize how it destroyed my life and who I am as a person. Modern life sucks.

I feel distressed over the sufferings of others too. I found out yesterday this depressed woman I knew in my old town died. She was the woman who was suicidal I was trying to reach out to years ago, but her mother didn't seem to want her to have outside friends. Sometimes you look someone up and then in shock discover they are dead. She died at the age of 41. I asked a mutual friend if she knew what happened but she said she did not and that she had lost her mother only a few years earlier. Such things make me feel very sad.

I don't feel like the same person here anymore. Like I have lost who I am. The silence, the being closed out, the having no where to belong has gotten to me. My husband doesn't feel right here either. We take refuge in each other and in our hobbies but something is wrong. There's few people out there who understand people who have no family and who never had children of their own. I was very sick in my old town but I missed who I was there. One friend told me that life no longer exists there, and she is right, but what of now? What do we do now? Is it us? Is it this place? I am not sure.

Something happened to me from all the losses. I don't feel much hope anymore which is semi-embarrassing for a Christian to admit. I am frustrated with the body, with everything.

What happens to a Christian too where life has been full of so much disappointment? Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Why did God allow these things to happen to my life? I'm not sure what to do. Taking a bunch of Prozac to numb it out isn't the answer. Some may say "Stop with the self-pity" but I really am sad. I can't deny these feelings. I wish God would help me too, or send me some relief.

Update 2019: Prayer doesn't work. I feel sad reading this but you can see the earlier seeds of my deconversion already beginning two years before it happened.  I don't believe in God anymore not in the Christian sense but I feel pain for all those who were given the false promises and waste endless time praying like this. All relationships are supposed to be two way streets.

Portlandia Milk Advisory Board

   

This made me laugh because a friend recommended I get some CASHEW milk and I said, "They are making milk out of everything now aren't they?" Well Lactaid Milk has been a miracle for me and I've happily been eaten dairy again. I still like Almond Milk though.

Their Water Smelled Like Rotten Eggs

I had a weird memory the other day, how my grandmother's water smelled like rotten eggs.

Why didn't they ever test the water or do anything about it? Maybe they did, but I knew nothing about it.

She had money to do so especially later in life. On visits, I would bring my own bottled water as soon as I was old enough, but you could smell the unusual smell in the food, and when you took a shower at her house. It was strong and smelled just like eggs gone bad.

My N grandmother, NM, Uncle Narcissist would all act like it was no big deal. I remember my brother crying that he didn't want to drink the nasty tasting and smelling water or maybe it was me. Kool-Aid didn't touch that stuff. As soon as my grandmother turned on the faucet the smell would float through the house. My Uncle Lost Boy and his wife and three adult children [all in their mid-20s] live in that house and I wonder if they have done anything about the water. I remember it stinking from the 1970s to the last day I visited her house in 2005.

Someone posted on this subject on another message board which brought this memory up to me. Did that stinky water lower IQs? Did it bring cancer? Did it mess up their minds even more?

Why Does My Water Smell Like Rotten Eggs?

Goth Lucy

From This Charming Charlie tumblr

"I Can't Pop Popcorn Without a Manual"

Notice how simple everything is to use?

"I can't Pop Popcorn Without a Manual"

"I complained to Carolyn, as usual. “What they hell am I supposed to do, go get a computer education so I can use my microwave popcorn?” And then I thought, “how come all those wonderful science fiction writers didn’t predict this? This was never on Star Trek, they always had food makers that effortlessly made your food to exact specifications, and they tasted good. NO CONAGRA; NO TASTELESS FOOD. No lack of diversity, and complete conformism and boredom of food! Gene Roddenberry, you should turn over in your grave.”

This article speaks truth. Why are they making the most simple things so complicated where they are so overwhelmed with whistle and bells, it is unusable. Remember on the Jetsons how everything was simple?

Here is a list of things I can't figure out to use myself:

Windows 8. I hate it, I have to search for everything even to shut off the computer. If I had time, I would strip Windows 8 off this computer and download Windows 7.

Open Office/Word programs. Anything complicated like making a brochure, forget it.

Cell phones. Why do I have to press on it a certain amount of seconds to get it to turn on? Our main phone usage remains a landline. Yes that is how much I hate cell phones.

DVD player, we own an old used one, but it's such a struggle to figure out what button to push, I don't rent movies anymore. Hooking one up to a TV is a nightmare I left to others.

CPAP machine: I've had panicky moments screwing up the settings so just plug it back in and hope for the best. Thankfully that usually works.

Airconditioner: The landlord put a new one in with the remote control. I can figure out how to turn it on at least but not much more. There's 10 other buttons on the remote that make no sense to me.

Cable remote: Don't ask me how to pick one of those by choice movies. Even for stripped down-cable the bill is too high.

My TV is 20 years old, but the new ones I have seen at other people's houses scare me. I don't want a TV that hooks up to a computer with a million confusing directions.

I don't know how to use smart phones, blue-ray--is that what they are called and many other aspects of modern technology. My car is 12 years old but I am sure they are complicating those too as we speak. One thing I don't like is how nothing has ON and OFF buttons anymore.

Everything new they are making it seems, makes things much more complicated. They have thrown user-friendly in the trash can. Even Yahoo email used to be easy to use until they ruined it. A friend of mine downloaded Windows 10 on her laptop. I said, "Don't do it, your computer is not new enough, it will collapse the computer!" It did. They have sent me their free offers too and I don't want them. The newer the program the more impossible it is to use.

I believe someone could make millions if they came up with very easy technology to use, stripped down to the basics, put what each button does right on it and make it simple.

I'm old enough to remember the days when there was great hope regarding technology. We believed it would make life easier. The only new invention I think that has been somewhat life changing is the Internet. For me it was like taking a library home with me. When the internet bust out in the mid-90s I was in heaven though it would take until the early 2000s to manage having it at home. The phone wires in my bad neighborhood weren't good enough for the phone modems back then. However technology as a whole has seemed disappointing. Outside the internet it really didn't change modern life. If anything the work world is regressing back to the 1890s and social life has worsened. There aren't that many labor saving devices that really made life much easier outside of what was achieved by the 1950s. Day to Day life really didn't change that much outside the life of screens, and being online. The medical world is still very limited with few miracles there. Some of us have asked "Where are our flying cars?"

Narcissistic Abuse: Attack of the True Self

That is what they go after our true self, our soul, conscience and insides given to us by God. They have definitely shut theirs down. Even before I knew about narcissism, I used to tell friends, my mother and father seem to be empty shells, no one seems to be home. This video resonated with me because I was hated and rejected from a very early age, it was not something that came later or with the teen years. They were angry at my creativity and soul. With narcissists, we all have felt that cold feeling. There is no mind to meet. No soul or emotions to communicate with. With my mother, I noticed she had no introspection by the time I was a teen and told people. There is "no one" to reach out for. Sadly this is something narcissists hold in common that coldness where no one seems home. This even overlaps with the "phonies" and "fakes", they are others who have shut down their true selves and have created a false "self" or mask to function in the world.  Your flicker of light is definitely what they desire to snuff out. One thing to be mindful of is, if someone else wants to snuff out your light or creativity, that is someone to steer very clear of. The battle with narcissists is spiritual warfare. No doubt of it.

So Sick of the Fakes

I'm so sick of the fakes I want to throw up. It seems harder and harder to find real and honest people.  One thing about the narcissists is many of them are two-faced wolves in sheep's clothing. They will act nice to your face or send you fake cards that have messages like "We miss you" while never addressing the problems that led you to depart from them in the first place.

 I don't want to sound like that Salinger hero who goes on and on about the phonies, since he was a sociopath himself, but a lot of people out there are fake. It has made society fake. Our society is built on lies, and the snow shoveling has only gotten more frenzied and the piles of cow patties deeper. People don't want the truth or their illusions shattered. This society is getting the narcissist sociopathic politicians it deserves. As an Aspie, the fakeness bothers me more. So much just seems to be so much play-acting. Everyone trying to sell a line. If you are a person that cares about truth, most of the fakes just go silent around you and become even more secretive. Maybe they find their lies too hard to keep straight and track of around a detailed-oriented Aspie.

 Sometimes when a fake is in my midst, I ask later, "How could I have been so blind?". In every case though, I knew something was wrong and felt off. Some go through their lives like actors and actresses, everything about manipulating circumstances to serve their needs. It can be devastating when the veil is ripped off a new fake, such as the fake friend who wasted 4 years of my life. The real people are out there, but we need to be careful of the phonies.