Created January 12, 2018 All My Friends Are Celluloid

As I have no personal life at all, or perhaps because all I have is the personal life of the average hermit, it turns out that all my friends are on TV. I weep for them, I feel joy for them, I understand them, and I wonder why it is that there are none like these people in my own life to who would love and support me unconditionally. Nor people that I can love and support in kind. Of course, I know the answer – I am not a part of anything. And too anxiety-ridden to find anything of which I can be a participating member. So far, my attempts to do so have been futile.

A very long time ago I attempted to join in the local scene by attending the community cookout that occurs every Friday in the summer months across the street from the courthouse. I put on a casual dress and an attractive straw hat. I sat down at a picnic table with my hotdog and pop, and was joined by a rather odd couple. The woman looked me straight in the eye and said that TV was evil, that the characters thereon were not real, and that I needed Christ in my life to save me from the devil himself. Then they left. I continued to sit there, in a state of confusion, until I shook it off and went home.

That was the last time I attended those cookouts. Now I look the other way as I drive by.

In real life, I do not understand anyone. I’ve very rarely been able to read people, have never understood the subtlety that most use to communicate. I am myself direct and literal. This has caused me innumerable personal and professional problems, and has interfered with my ability to make friends. All of my city friends were really “couple” friends; without my former husband, I would have had none, and after we split, I did not have those friends anymore.

When I used to drink, I once went to a bar and in that state of inebriation I thought I had found people with whom I could be friends. That did not prove to be the case – they had forgotten me by the next day. But one guy did tell me that the longer I put off letting someone in, the more chance there would be that I would never be able to. He was right. I feel closed off and wary, and wonder if there is any way that a single woman of my age can even make women friends. Their lives are all set; no room for one more. As for the male of the species, every man I talk to, in whatever circumstance, either tells me almost immediately that he is married, or the “little woman” anxiously shows up to claim ownership.

I did make one friend outside of the bar scene, but I do not have that friend anymore. I wanted to have a real life with him, to be a couple. In consequence, I lost him as a friend.

Of course, I have easily – and to my mind, rightly – pinned the blame for my lonely (and financially precarious) predicament on myself and on the choices I have made and continue to make. Strike that: on the mistakes I’ve made and continue to make. This is the kind of thinking that my therapist is trying to eradicate from my inner voice. Mostly unsuccessfully, I might add. It seems that, according to her, each and every time that I make the right choice, or just not make a mistake, my mind decides that I am uncomfortable about feeling at all good and therefore I must slip down into what is “normal” for my mind. What is normal for me? Inertia and ennui. Anxiety and depression.