My Loneliness, My Pain...

It’s been a few years since I’ve written, especially on anything deeply personal.

Please bear w/ this aging dragon as this particular writing has been bouncing around in my head for several weeks, and I simply need to spill myself out on the page, or it could, sincerely, kill me (…and yes, that has been a recent thought). I’m hurting and tired of knowing that my pain could be alleviated simply by people ACTUALLY physically showing up, instead of making excuses and giving reasons as to why they won’t or can’t. Yes, my therapist knows of my pain and sadness.

Imagine for an instant, don my shoes (if you will), attempt for the briefest of moments to understand where I’m coming from when I reach out for connection so persistently. 

I’m trying to save a life…my own.

In the interest of providing deeper transparency…

I have C-PTSD w/ an infancy onset. 

Yes, you read that right. I have a professional DX of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that originated during my infancy. This DX comes w/ several levels of abandonment and neglect brought on by the latchkey culture of the 70s and 80s. Truth is, I likely should have been DX’s w/ Disinhibited Reactive Attachment Disorder during my childhood due to my insatiable need to connect w/ other people in some way. There’s a reason for this…

Anyway, please read on (this is an honest attempt to open up so people see me, before I close down completely).

I was born, prematurely (about a month early, 5lbs, 10oz) w/ a Negative RH factor. 

At 10 days old, after several invasive (I still have the scars to show for it) biopsies to determine WTF was wrong w/ me, and after finally coming home, I was returned to the hospital and exchange blood transfusions were introduced (the protocol in 1968 for Negative RH). 

Each transfusion set up an Acquired Respiratory Infection. 

I spent the next 4 months in an oxygen incubator box, unable to be touched by ungloved hands, unable to be coddled, cuddled, or held close against another human body. 

So much I could say about this portion of my origin story but, suffice to say, I was an extremely sickly infant and the possibility that I wouldn’t thrive was obvious. 

Thankfully, I did thrive, and I lived through my initial trauma but this doesn’t mean it wasn’t already onboard, or that it was the end of my emotional and physical trauma, sadly. 

The simplest discloser, w/o laying anymore details here, would be to say that the neglect and abuse I sustained was continuing and compounding throughout my childhood. I wouldn’t find out until my 40s that I was, in fact, unwanted and perceived as punishment (my mother’s perception, albeit unconscious) for my older sibling being adopted out; a sibling I didn’t even know about until my 40s.

All of this, and so much more (daily beatings from my adopted father, ridicule and neglect from he and my mother, etc.) has lead me into an adulthood that has included an incessant and intrinsic need for companionship and connection. I’m so very lonely and it has NOTHING to do w/ being an alleged incel. 

No, I don’t feel entitled to companionship, I’m not a misogynistic fuckhead, and I don’t have any self-loathing like those characterized by the label. 

Before all that, before life got especially fucked, we moved (I was barely 7) to a new house at the end of a cul-de-sac (read on, this will become relevant). 

By this point I had already been DX’ed w/ ‘Minimal Brain Dysfunction’ (the precursor to A.D.D). I was, as you could expect, unruly, anxious, unpredictable, had behavior issues, not ‘normal’ by any exaggeration or definition of the term. Suffice to say, no one, including my already exhausted and neglectful parents, really knew what to do w/ me; other than futile attempts and severe discipline and corporal punishment. Combine all of this w/ the fact that I had been taken away from the friends who had learned to accept my idiosyncratic behaviors, and, well, as you may imagine it only caused me to become more incorrigible. 

Back to the cul-de-sac…

Shortly after we first moved I remember standing in the middle of the cul-de-sac yelling for ‘friends’ to come play. Yeah, IK, odd behavior, nothing new for me. The friends didn’t come, not right away anyway. They didn’t know me, I was new, and I’m sure my odd behavior wasn’t at the top of their lists to make friends w/ me. It took a while for me to make new friends even w/ my yelling from the cul-de-sac. 

Yeah, IK, I’m still screaming out my need for friends and companionship 50 years later.

It didn’t really change as I got older. In fact, my weird behaviors got worse. 

Naturally, due to that fact, I become the butt of many an indignity, and ridicule. 

I was picked on, bullied, laughed at, called names (that oftentimes, unfortunately stuck), got in fights, exhibited socially unacceptable behavior in attempts to be more likeable…and so on. Growing up was hard (yeah IK it’s hard for everybody in some way), and, yeah, I probably brought a lot of it on myself but, the intrinsic need to have close friends and people who loved me for me (despite my overall weirdness) kind of dictated more weirdness. 

Jump forward to the present…

3 marriages, divorced in all three. A few long(er) term relationships that also ended irreconcilably and I’m left w/ almost a decade of lacking in real, honest, loving friendships and companionships. 

I have no real connections that spend any type of real time w/ me. 

I have one friend….ONE! 

Yeah, IK, many of you think of me as a friend. 

But, do you actually spend any time w/ me? 

Do we go and do things together? 

Do we make plans, even plans we know we won’t follow through w/? 

Do any of you even know what kind of coffee I drink? 

Do any of you know what my dreams are?

Mostly, that answer is a resounding, NO!

Simply put, we aren’t friends. We’re acquaintances. 

People! I am dying here. 

This is not an exaggeration, or a platitude. My soul is literally decaying under the weight of my loneliness; Emily Dickinson be damned. 

I cannot fix this w/ self love. I love myself just fine. I am way too extremely self aware to allow any temporary emotional discomfort to dictate actions that will end me but god damned if I don’t fully understand why lonely people commit suicide. 

The thought, for myself, isn’t that far from the edge of my brain. 

Thankfully, it’s ONLY a thought…for now.

Every single fucking day that goes by we hear and see that we are supposed to reach out when we are feeling low; that when we reach out people will supposedly reach back. Sadly, for as long now as I have been reaching out (years now) I’d have to call bullshit on the whole ‘people will reach back’ portion of this. No one reaches back to me, so I’m left w/ thoughts of ‘what’s the fucking point?’.

There are many days that the ONLY reason I carry on is to save my son from the pain of a father who left before his time. Some of you will understand this.

I NEED FRIENDS Y’ALL. 

I need companions to bear witness to my life, and I want to be part of yours too. 

This is a REAL NEED. I’m really not just a pathetic loner, not by any choice anyway.

Maybe you see me better now, or maybe you’re still better w/ your blindfold, or your rose colored glasses. Maybe it won’t be me you reach back to but, please, if you see someone hurting, sad, or lonely, PLEASE reach to them if they reach out, and even if they don’t…before you can’t.