Belonging

my favorite quote of all time is from marilyn monroe in 'the misfits': 'If I'm going to be alone, I'd rather be by myself'. that pretty much sums up the result of a whole lifetime of isolation and not having learned the ability to develop social connections. i didn't learn to do that, primarily because i was threatened very early in my young life to never use my voice. not to talk about the abuse: i became scared silent, first and foremost in my own family, the school for learning skills and tools for developing self care techniques and networking capabilities. and this spilled into other aspects of my life as well. so i learned to shut up and put up, rather than to risk expressing myself independently. they had me convinced that i could not function or survive outside the sphere of their influence, and fearful of their retaliatory actions, little ron bought into it, and believed it for many many years.

at some point however, i had to turn the tables on that, by realizing that first, i had to stop rejecting and abandoning myself, to stop carrying on a tradition that had began decades ago, and which i reinforced in every new social relationship i encountered.

it has been a struggle to create brand new wirings in my brain that will reinforce new patterns of connecting. but, i've spent the last year and a half cultivating that skill, and have netted several new friendships, all more authentic than those shallow ones i had previously established based on 'don't ask don't tell' terms of endearment. don't tell me who you are, i don't want to know; i used to chose all the wrong people to affirm and validate me, and if i am honest, they are so very similar to the people who originally scared me into rejecting myself so many years ago, my very own family. i thought i needed their approval, so i just kept on trying to amend myself to their liking. well, gratefully, i have let them all go, and all those i allow close enough to nurture me now with their care and concern, must embrace every aspect of my being, or they don't get the right to be my friend. today, ron is making the rules.

building trusting and comfort-able relationships takes time, and i've noticed that in that development period, especially those of us who come here starving for authentic love and nurture denied us so many years, are easily hurt as the old familiar rejection and abandonment issues are exacerbated when we feel we've been slighted, ignored, or someway or another made to feel invisible and unimportant.

that's the flaw of these cyber communities. we can only get so close. and also, being that each of us are at differing levels of personal social development, different class, so diverse in our backgrounds, failing to spark a connection only serves in the end to reinforce those feelings of abandonment and rejection mentioned earlier. we long to imagine we've achieved some depth of closeness, and in some cases we have, but often those are only fleeting moments that prove themselves false as over time the flame of hope for finding the deep connections we've been denied so any years, begins to fade over the passing of time.

many of us will probably not get our deepest needs met here, but this site can be used to identify those needs, preparing us to go out into the playground of the 3D world and apply those principles to those real situations we encounter in the dream of everyday regular life.

that's my take on it anyway; very personal no doubt, but part of my story.