Can you say sa bo tage?
Doh.......you bet! (you're funny. I had to laugh a good one at myself)
I think this is how it goes. I have my strategy (my outfit. What I will talk about. Why I am sooooo attractive as a friend) and then I sally forth to implement. It goes ok for a while. I am happy. Things are clicking. Then something happens that I am not sure how to interpret. Maybe something is said that I don't know how to respond to or I respond badly. Maybe someone gets called away to another conversation. The talk turns to something cool I don't know about or a place I haven't been invited and they all have. Maybe I stay too long in the conversation before moving on (my forte).
Then I crumple. I knew I had no business here. I mentally bang my head against the wall. Usually I can go on and recover. But when I am alone, the real self hatred starts.
Now I think it also has something to do with the fact that as a child my father rarely let me go on outings my sister went on. The excuse was that I was too young, but I reached and surpassed the age she had been at and was still Cinderella in the house dressed in rags. (For this insight, I thank one mother who refused to take my sister to an outing with her daughters after she came to pick us up, found out I was not going and did not accept the reasons why. Thank you, thank you, for calling this to my attention for the first time! If you think a single moment cannot affect a child's life, think again.)
I also link this to being bullied at the brink of adolescence by a group of stylish girls, led by one in particular whose intense hatred of me I could never fathom. At a reunion long ago, I saw them and even then, as adults, they made jokes about me finally becoming 'cool', since I was cute, well-dressed, and with a hot guy. (Sigh. The good old days.)
Thank you for working this through with me. I have to say my intense feelings yesterday were overwhelming, even though I did not think I had good reason. I had the odd sensation of sinking down into a well, and I was not sure how low I was going to go.
Just as soon as you see it clearly enough and are ready to look at it, call it what it is, yank it out of yourself, and feel yourself liking yourself,
I am envisioning some movie I saw where a person had to use a pair of pliers to wrench out an alien implant. It was brutal, painful, and so necessary. Thanks for that Hoppy.
Do you have some anxious feeling left over from the EX's behavior?
I think now I am afraid to make contact because of the times he embarrassed me. I'll invite people over and he makes sure the house is a wreck. I accept an invitation and then he decides he won't care for the kids.
Hi gratitude/Beth, I am happy wth me but I have no one to talk to except my children, and they are very young. I really want flesh and blood friends too. I am social and I'm all pent up.
Keep searching for what is going wrong. You are getting close to an answer. - your friend - Gaining Strength
Thank you. I hope so.