Nuance 24

People will assume all kinds of things about my life and situation, and for one simple reason: they have not lived my experience. It seems that almost no one else appears to know what it is to have neither family nor adoptive family. No one knows, nor wants to know, what it is like to be this alone. It is too frightening for them, and they don't want to think about it. For me, despite some of my recent complaints, this is a liberation I am not, here, going into detail about my horrible family, as their crimes against me have been elsewhere documented on this blog, but I am now free from the nightmare. It does repeat on me every Christmas, but there is a lot of trauma wrapped around that season for me, and I do not wish to write further about this, Gentle Reader. It has been very difficult for me keeping friendships, and I suppose for various reasons. One rather cruel individual, while trying to drive me out of his life, accused me of driving people away from me, and I know this is not true, and that bullies like him will use whatever justification they can grab out of the air for treating others badly. (So, sue me, Myer Leech!) But this is something we often all do to one another and at various times in our lives. If there is anything that frightens people away from me, it is simply, this: they cannot cope with having a friend who is so unmoored and so unsupported. It is frightening for them. It makes them feel obligated, because surely for a person like me, things are not going to come out well. What really heightens the injustice is this: if we cannot rely on our friends to help support us when we have no family in our lives, to try to become a kind of extended or adoptive family, then whom can we rely on, and really, how can anyone with that kind of selfish attitude be called a friend? But we're living now in different times, and people are a lot more selfish than they used to be. We have become a culture of consumers, and in all of our relationships, it seems to be all about what we can get, not what we can give. I do not place a demand or expectation that others are going to adopt me into their homes, otherwise I would have dumped every one of those losers whom I thought were my friends over these last ten years or so. But now, enough is enough. I happen to know, that if I was in a position to help any of those wankers during the Christmas holidays, if they were alone and without family, I would at least try to visit them, even just on the phone for that day, because I know how horrible it can be feeling alone and abandoned at Christmas, and I at least treat others like human beings. Unfortunately, very few of the friends in my life seem to share those values, so it is time to say goodbye. The other thing about being alone and without family is that you really need and appreciate your need for others. Those losers who are not real friends don't have a clue what it is like, and if they had to walk in my shoes even for one day, I would probably be visiting them in the psychiatric hospital. And, unlike those idiots, at least I would care enough to see how they were doing.