Anita,

I would SO love to talk about my actual thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment or dismissal! And I would love constructive feedback, too, if I seem off balance or one sided. I feel like generally speaking, people don’t tend to like me, like I’m kind of just unappealing. Or I say something and people react to it in a weird way because it’s not something that someone would normally say. And my only socializing happens at work and you really can’t talk about anything at work bc there are landmines in every conversation and I seem to veer into those zones workout intention.

And people don’t ever tell you why they are upset with you or why you bothered them so it’s hard to navigate work socialization too.

I’ll post an example in a bit.

Forum Friend Anita,

That is correct, although I hadn’t thought of it that way until you said it. Interesting to hear it back through a different perspective.

I do not have contact with my mother anymore. It was too draining.

Her accounts of my childhood have very little to do with reality and always star her in the perfect parent role. Anything she doesn’t want to admit to is denied and then she uses fights ir silent treatments to further avoid talking about things. She wouldn’t ever admit that she has been anything but wonderful, which suggests to me that she already knows it was wrong.

Just before my senior year of high school, my parents got divorced and I was put in the middle of their fighting and wound up missing a lot of school because I was home sick with stress induced stomach ulcers. I transferred to a different high school, and my mother kicked me out of the house when she found out that I had been skipping school. So I wound up pregnant and in a shelter when I was 18, and my son was born not long after that. No exciting story here, just slipping through the cracks. 🙂