Project "Friends"

I don't want any more project "friends". In fact I am going to be careful to avoid people who want to turn me into a project or want to "fix me". I can befriend people fast online and have found various friend soulmates via the internet. It seems like the Internet is my mecca of friendship and social connection while the real world, it just seems harder.

One thing I noticed that happened to me is I seemed to hook up with all these people who wanted to FIX ME.

Disabled people are very prone to project "friends". Legions of church ladies will go befriend the disabled lady to prove their holiness to their congregation. Some will be seeking bennies for heaven, in being your friend. They can fool you smiling at you, and you think there is mutual like and sharing of the minds there. You even make them laugh but watch out, inside they are horrified by you. Think of the Movie, "My Fair Lady", but with two females instead, they want to whip you into shape.  Changing your speech patterns, social personality and more. Often they will direct you to some volunteer projects and will insist on you "improving" yourself. They will tell you things like "Let's not talk about that now!" or "Lets be more positive now!"

If anyone wants to fix me, goodbye. I'm done with it. This doesn't mean not trying to progress but I am tired of being tested and given hoops and endless goal posts that are always moving from other people. I am tired of being told that it's my fault spiritually or that I am a bad person or I have to do this and that to be deemed worthy of existence. Is this something my ACON upbringing gave me? Falling into this pit of dealing with these people who put me in this position. I don't think many people would put up with it.

I am tired of being judged for my feelings. Some of these people have had completely different lives from my own where they had good health and close families who were always there for them. I don't expect everyone to "get it" but it seems a few of these church going types could dig into their cold hearts for a little bit of compassion.  They do not know what it is like to be running away from someone coming at them with a knife or what it is like to dig food out of a trashcan. If you think I'm a freak, next time just walk away, don't waste my time.

I am tired of being judged for my health. So your body works and you don't have severe obesity and can eat food and don't look like a melting candle from the waist down. Maybe I should have showed the projects how I really felt, and laid in bed crying and groaning from all the pain I was really in. My stiff upper lip stuff failed. They don't think you are brave, they are embarrassed by you and consider you a lesser being.

Next time I feel like I have to walk on eggshells or censor myself around someone, I may as well not waste my time. If someone tries to control my speech, and tell me what to talk about or tell me my feelings are wrong or too extreme, or if my problems are "too great" for their self help group and my pain embarrasses them, I should just walk out and slam the door. Otherwise I will be pouring energy into an already doomed relationship.

This may be partially my fault, as I have so many problems and a life that seems spiraling out of control and a body from Hades itself so maybe I present myself in a way that draws these people out of the woodwork. Some may have good intentions even from the start but they really hurt people like me. It is just another person telling me I am "bad", "wrong" and "not measuring" up.

I may present myself with too much pity and pathos. It's probably my fault. Stir together Aspergers, bad health problems and an INFP personality too, and well, I'm too sensitive for this world. This means keeping more of my problems to myself as the new answer.

Many of these types will fool you easily. They can appear to have empathy and to "care" even with all the volunteer and other projects they take on and even "help" they do. But it seems when push comes to shove and you are crying and upset, that empathy vaporizes like a fart in the wind. If you make the "error" of refuting them or standing up for yourself, they discard and devalue pretty quick.

Sadly you find out their lack of respect for you eventually and it usually has to do with how they treat you regarding other people. Just like our narcissistic mothers threw us scapegoats overboard for everyone from the milk man to a cousin, the same likewise will apply to "project friends". They won't stand up for you even if someone insults you to your face several times with your husband witnessing it and telling them because you are a lower social status. Sometimes they claim they stood up for you but will be pissed off and resentful about it.  They won't have your back. They will go running to talk to someone else even if you are mid-sentence with them.

I guess I can die of boredom behind a fake smile. Of course when I try to fake it, it never worked either. Sometimes you will think there is even mutual sharing of challenges, and that you are balancing things out nicely but supposed they can vent while you are always a complainer. My life seems to have been one of sinking into the wallpaper and/or opening my mouth and pissing everyone off. Now that I am old, hopefully the "Fix-It" and "Improve-It" Queens will find a younger victim. I'd rather be a friend to someone eating out of a trashcan and living in the park rather then another woman who will tsk her tongue at my bad housekeeping or get angry at me for having feelings or who will tell me I need to do this and that to be a "worthwhile" person.

American society and me don't go together well. I'm a crappy stoic. I smile but the sadness still comes through in the eyes. I'm bad at hiding depression or anger. I would flunk salesman school and charm school. Maybe some think they can solve my problems of no money and health from the gates of hell. If I can't fix then how can you? I have failed to solve them and I'm tired. I just want to live in peace and be left alone now.

I had this one friend who was one of these types in my old rural town, and I feel like I repeated the same scenario with the latest friend. This friend was older, very religious in a mainstream church and had 4 children. I met this one when I was still in the Catholic church. I would go eat at her house and even befriended her children. We got along pretty well, but then things got kind of weird. She started the "project" stuff.

She wanted to get me another friend saying that this woman who was in and out of the mental hospital every week and who had made several suicide attempts in a row, would be my new perfect friend. Now I am open to everyone even people with severe mental problems, but it really worried me in that she saw this very troubled person as my peer instead of herself. I was not in the psych ward, I was a newly disabled ex-residential counselor. The whole thing bothered me inside. I was noticing then she was befriending OTHER disabled and very troubled people! A pattern was being set. She also was going through these disabled and troubled people like toilet paper. I was one in a long line. One thing these project friend types will do is seek out troubled people. They can forget their problems while attempting to fix theirs. Some of the more toxic ones will feel superior and better about themselves to have a more "screwed up" person next to them. Sadly our society is so competitive and narcissistic, these things shouldn't even be occurring to people but they do!

I still remember the day she came to my house with 8 boxes. Back then I was a more eager to please personality and she said, "Hey I have something for you! It's a bunch of craft supplies!" I thought "Oh boy!", and took the boxes. It would be a metaphor for the friendship as the boxes were full of scraps and trash, tin cookie cans, ripped up old ribbons, bits of yarn and twisted wires. I ended up throwing away the whole lot except for some old buttons and pieces of pins and beads, I used for a community art project later on. She was moving the very next day and hadn't told me. So much for it being a close friendship. She would later tell a friend she had unfriended me for leaving the Catholic church I don't know, but this was my first run in with a "project friend" or someone who felt they were superior to me. I can't say she was a totally bad person but she was working her way to heaven using me. She rescued me from an ice storm. She helped me with church groups. Was she really a friend? Not really.

It is Better to Be Alone than Abused: Loneliness in Our Society

This is a tragic story about a lady named Pia Farrenkopf who was discovered 5 years after she died, mummified in the back seat of her car in her garage. No one checked on her. No one realized she was missing. This is the loneliness of nightmares. Sadly as our society breaks apart, and social connections die, these stories become more widespread. Hers is not the first I remember reading about. Pia's story to me is very sad. I wonder if she was an Aspie too though an Aspie in this case who had computer skills allowing her to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

I don't feel as alone now before as I have years earlier.  I do have some good local friends, they call and check on me. Even people I am acquaintances with ask after me around here. My town is friendly. My friends and I have fun times together. My husband is with me everyday. He worries about me and keeps track of me. I have a ton of long distance friends I write to and call. Some of them I am very close to as well. My husband and friends are very important to me.

The isolation of disability though can hit hard. It takes me years to make friends. I am Aspie and unlike a neurotypical it can take me 5 years in a new community to even make a friend or two.  I am not one of those people with 1100 friends on Facebook, or with a party to go to every weekend. There are many times where I do worry that I and my husband are far too isolated though we work to change this. At least half of my social life due to my circumstances is conducted online. My husband only has one living relative, a sister who never has visited us. Also if I won the Lotto tomorrow, forget buying the new house and rest, the first year would be spent visiting friends nationwide. There's at least 12  people I'd go visit in different towns right off with rests in between.

We have moved too much too. While I like my present community and need its medical care, my life has been full of too many goodbyes. As economic nomads, the constant moving for survival just meant roots being constantly ripped up and thrown away.  I wrote about my grief of leaving my old loved small town. More grief was piled on as more and more people including several friends died. Even my old church closed and three-four of my old favorite hangouts burned down. It would take years to even talk about the place without crying anymore.  I told my husband 4 years ago, I will not move anymore and have stuck to this. I cannot bear to live in a place again where "no one knows my name".

When I went no contact, one old long distance friend was kind of against it, though I told her it was my life is at stake, and she came around. One thing she said to me was, "If you keep cutting everyone off, you will end up alone!" She acted like it would be my fault if I ended up alone. This went through my heart like a stake. Why? Because it is something that many people worry about in their heart being alone.  I believe there are many ACONS who cling to rotten abusers because they fear the desolation of "having nobody". For those of us who do part ways from narcissists and in many cases entire toxic narcissistic family systems you do worry about the ramification of your decisions.

My response to her was, "It is better to be alone than abused!"

One of my commenters pointed out this story in the video above to me. She pointed out her theory that Pia was an ACON. I think it is very probable. One thinks about stories about Tiffany Sedaris and other stories where they have no family to check on them. No one is there to care. They go unnoticed and invisible, they are cut out. No one is concerned about what becomes of them. Pia had nine siblings, where were they all? Why did everyone disappear? Where were any friends?

When I was young, I had times of extreme loneliness. In school there were times I did not have one friend in between family moves and other circumstances.  I did not know my husband yet during my first no contact and I had no family. My college friends had all moved home after graduation. When I moved out of my boarding house, into my first apartment on my own which was three rooms on the bottom floor of an old house in a poor neighborhood, I was totally alone.   My work hours were long but when times of unemployment hit, or there was a weekend with no work hours, sometimes it got scary sitting there and knowing I was so alone. I had no where to go, no one to see and no one to talk to. The long distance phone calls cost a lot more back then. Life seemed to pass with just a series of strangers going my way.  I knew no one who lived within 100 miles of me outside of co-workers. In my case, I'd hang out at the library or looking at the art at the local art center. Sure, I volunteered and took classes or went to church but it was just me, myself and I.

This was one very painful aspect of my first no contact. My journals lamented my pain, as I asked, "Why don't I have anyone?" This is the legacy of our abusive narcissistic parents too.  If you are the scapegoat they lead others to reject and ignore you and consider you unimportant. It isolates us to the extreme. I realize entire groups of people turned their backs on me because of my mother including entire families of neighbors and family friends. This went through my narcissistic family like a virus. I just wasn't important enough. As I wrote in one comment, one of my long time friends said, "They just didn't like you!" and sadly it was true. However they never knew me and my mother set that up in her own nefarious way.

The world figures out who doesn't have supportive kinfolk and sees you as prey. They have destroyed your ego and confidence and ability for self care to help you survive in what can be a very cold and hard world. For a socially awkward Aspie, alienation comes with the territory and this quadrupled the social problems. Watching other people who had loving families who "had their backs" and were active part of their lives without disdain and reluctance could be very painful. Other ACONs I am sure have shouted "Why me?". I find myself in awe of those in families where they mean something to the other people.

Fear came with being so alone. There were times I would be in the hospital with severe asthma attacks and no one would be there at all.  Thoughts of dying unmissed and unnoticed and in a pauper's grave went through my head. These are the days I started crying out to God before I became a Christian. Those kind of times change a person. While solitude to me can be a pleasant thing with time to think and do art work, I am scared to death of ever being that alone again. I don't think I could handle it.  The me of today is not physically capable of living alone too, which is a whole other ball of wax.

I never want to live alone in an apartment, disabled and forlorn. So many people in our society who are elderly and disabled, are isolated in this way. It worries me. Why does our society do this? Forgetting the elderly and disabled and shunting them away. Some people don't even have families, I never had children and know what that means while others had children and families, they are ignored after they move away. It is my life's endeavor to reach out to other lonely people. One thing about me is I often do reach out to elderly people and others.

 Our society is one sick place, closing everyone away in little boxes [apartments] to be alone and with no one to talk to. Even if I am concerned about Agenda 21 and other manipulations, cohousing sounds good to me, those wanting to rebuild community between neighbors and people, many have some good intentions I agree with. Who wants a life of just staring at walls with no one to talk to? I know I don't. One reason you may see me screaming against the housebound tsunami, is I know it guarantees more social isolation, it is even a test on the relationships I manage to form.

One thing I think about my narcissistic mother is that she never has been lonely. She never had one period in her life where there was no one there, this is the same for Mini-Me.  They don't even relate to emotions like this. They didn't end up outside the reservation with no one to talk to. She grew up with a close knit family surrounded by at least a hundred relatives. In her case, she takes people for granted, there are so many surrounding her. Could she even feel lonely though? If you are not attached to people you will not miss them. This is something I noticed about my sister too, no feelings of nostalgia or missing people there either. It was scary to see. My sister isn't as popular and lives a more isolated life then my mother but in this case does not care.

Our narcissistic society is having it's social connections breaking down. Others who are not disabled have told me they are just as alone, or they may have people they are friendly with but are not close to. They know something has gone wrong. Others tell me how difficult it has become to meet people. I cry reading the stories like this where someone dies alone and not cared about and unloved. Why didn't a neighbor or even an acquaintance check on her? Some may say, "Maybe she pushed everyone away!" but no one deserves to be that alone. I do believe the family connections are breaking down more and more. People took more time to visit each other. Some families stay intact despite long distance putting the energy and visits in, while others break apart. If there is a narcissist in the midst, they hog all the attention and people and leave none for you.

I still think it is better to be lonely then abused, no matter how hard loneliness can be. You really are still alone if you are keeping company with those who do not respect you or care about you. I know I never had a family, or people there for me. They didn't like me decades ago and the die was cast.  More room can be made in one's life for good people when energy is not being wasted on those who make you feel alone.

How many lonely people are there out there? How many lonely ACONs to eat their cup of soup and sandwich in front of their blaring TV at night with no one to share the hours of their life with? How many were cut off via the smear campaigns? How many elderly and disabled feeling the pain of no one there who really cares about them?  How many lost their families to the wicked machinations of narcissists? No one deserves to die alone like Pia did. No one.

Psalm 27:10 Though my mother and father forsake me then the Lord will take me up. 

Missing That Feeling of Belonging and Missing People

                                                [photo source]

Aspies hate change. I am on the top of that list. My idea of the happiest life would have been being born into a small village or nice small town and living there the rest of my life. One of my best friends from college, believes in reincarnation, I have openly witnessed the Christian gospel to her but this starts with her surmising. She says, "If you come back, wouldn't you want a life, where you live in a small village life-long and have close life long friends and family that never move away? I usually respond saying reincarnation is not true but that yes, that would be ideal. Yes, I know this would be some people's versions of hell, but we have added on the dictate that the families are loving and kind.

Too much moving ruined my life. My parents began it, and I continued it as an adult and it was always usually related to economic survival. The sociologists write about how economic trials affect a person practically but ignore some of the deeper issues. No one mentions the people you lose over the years, the ebbing away of relationships. I refuse to ever move again. It has to be this town or the old one for the rest of my life. I can't move away from any more local friends or the familiar again.

Being middle-aged and a stranger to so many sucks. I feel no sense of belonging or connection to a place and grieve this.  I had the feeling of belonging for a short time in my old town, but in some ways, I do not think I ever have recovered from that move 7 years ago, and when things economically collapsed there it made it worse. My old church and a volunteer organization I was involved with vanished, that made it even harder.  Even now I worry about things I have here, sliding away.

What goads me in some strange way, is my mother who really does not feel close attachments to anyone or the same sense of loss, was blessed with living her entire youth in a small community and being able to have visits and connections with everyone there for the rest of her life. She sees extended cousins to great-aunts without pause. She just saw the entire family network for the holidays. They come to her while no one visits me.  Funny how that works.

Despite great efforts to avoid this, I have joined the ranks of the "forgotten people". Some may point out, you went "no contact", so that's on you but the door was creaking shut on me from the other side just as much. My husband and I were discussing this, and he said, after his job lay-offs and we moved here which is the same distance from my mother's town as my old town but in a different direction, he noticed how I was cut off even more so. My mother actively worked to destroy relationships behind the scenes telling people lies.

One can't force people to be there, who do not want to be but it can bring some weird feelings. Some say its based on the overall break-up of society. My other long distance and disabled friends tell me their life is like this too. Even the healthy and active folks short on time, tell me how things do not seem the same as they used to be. Some accept it, some have given up, I met one of those people who told me with a straight face they have no friends at all.

Change to me always feels threatening. While there have been a couple good changes in my life such as when I played my own version of "Escape From New York" [insert name of another well-known giant American metro city here] to a small town in the middle of nowhere that brought me some years of happiness, there have been many changes that did not bring good things, but disappointment. Change for me has brought too many losses. I tell my best friends, "I have seen the back end of too many people." Some has been due to losing people to death but other factors have entered into it too. Sometimes it was torture when I was ostracized from my own family, hearing about my mother having the funds to visit every extended cousin and aunt or uncle, while I have not seen some people in years. I feel guilty too. A visit to my old town this fall was canceled due to health concerns, and money. It's like why do I have to work so hard to be present? Why do I have to lack the money and health to make it happen?

With time, and distance a person can become a stranger. Even with intense efforts, I sometimes struggle with the picturing myself as a "photo" that is being erased. Be careful reading 30 year old letters while cleaning out your bedroom and not crying over the lost people either to death, moving away, the march of time, or the machinations of narcissists.

I have not seen any relatives on my father's side of the family in 30 years.

I have not seen relatives on my mother's side of the family in 8 years [these are people I am in contact with]

I have not seen two nephews in 4 years.

I have not seen other nieces and nephews in 2 years.

I have not seen one good college friend since 1993 that I talk to weekly on the phone.

I have not seen my old town or my friends there since 2011.

Being a disabled person in American society, you do get forgotten about and shunted away, while some of us manage to make a few friends and ones who are good about visiting us, for many isolation is a serious problem that can take over one's life. Housebound? It can get serious some times. I feel like life is passing me by. I am invisible.

I put extraordinary effort into not giving in to it, and have a couple good friends that help me beyond just seeing these 4 walls, including one who picked me up to get coffee on a day it warmed up enough for me to escape outside two Saturdays ago. But it can be hard. You feel like a ghost in your life, I have laughed at my weeks being stuck in the apt unable to breathe in cold or too much heat, as like "doing time". I MISS a lot of people. It's like my lack of funds, and ability to travel, wiped too many people away. As I have written before modern American life, with its mobility and rest sucks for the poor, the working class and the disabled.

There's far too many people I miss. There's far too many people I have not seen in YEARS. What should I do about it? See them or pay my rent? I never wanted to become a stranger but I did.