Yet another letdown.  I finally got to see my psychologist, yes, but now she's the bearer of another disappointment.  In lots of our sessions she would refer to another client of hers, who sounds to be really into the same subject I am, and every time she mentioned her I thought wistfully over what it would be like if we could meet.  But I knew that wouldn't happen otherwise it already would have.  At the last session she finally tentatively asked if it would be okay for her to mention me to this other client so maybe we could get in touch, "And maybe that can be your link to somebody else."  It sounded so wonderful, but I told myself not to get my hopes up…I never manage to suppress them though, stupid as I am.  I'm just so lonely.  I just want ONE other person.  I've given up all my other hopes and dreams along the way, by now this is all I can really wish for, and even it seems too much.

I said yes, she could let this other person know.  The way she phrased it, she thought it would be good for me to WRITE to this other person first.  Well, she called me yesterday to give me this person's first name (can't give the last name) and TELEPHONE NUMBER–and not only that, but it's not her personal number from what I gather, it's actually her mother's house since she usually stays there with her kids.  She said this woman had invited me to a special group meeting pertaining to our shared interest so I was welcome to come to that, though the psychologist didn't know where this is so I figure she meant me to ask whenever I called.  That meeting was for tonight; I said I have no transport, though she still hoped maybe I could go.  That was it.

I spent the night and most of today crying because it's just another in an endless line of letdowns.  How can she possibly think I could just call this person, this total stranger?  When every time I call HER or a doctor it takes everything I have just to do it, and even afterwards I feel horrible for hours?  Every time I get off the telephone with somebody, I just want to go cry in humiliation, that's how bad it is–not mentioning how long it takes me just to summon up the courage to make a call.  It never gets any easier–never.  And that's when I know who I'm going to be getting in touch with, who will be there and if they'll be in.  Not so with this person.  I don't know if she'll be at work, if her mother or somebody else will answer, if she'll be busy, if there will be an answering machine or what.  Even if she herself picks up, what am I to say?  "Hi, I'm R., the psychologist might have told you about me"?  Then what?  All the psychologist said she told her was there was a group meeting and I was welcome to come.  She didn't say that this person showed even the remotest interest in getting to know ME personally.  Just invited me to a group.

I don't WANT to go to a group meeting just yet.  I hate groups.  I just disappear into the background at groups; nobody ever notices me, and I'm always so terrified and humiliated that all I want to do is leave and cry.  That's why I stopped going to FAMILY GATHERINGS, for cripes' sakes–FAMILY GATHERINGS!  Every year I dreaded the Christmas gathering so much, so many other people–people I KNEW, not even strangers–never anywhere to sit, nobody ever paying any attention to me, me begging my parents to just take me home, them getting angry and refusing because they didn't want to leave yet, it was such a relief when I became old enough to refuse to go, now I just stay at home alone all day on Christmas.  It's better being alone than being invisible.  Even in school group projects I usually just did them on my own rather than be shoehorned into a group that didn't want me and would ignore me once I was put there by a teacher.  So I hate groups.  I don't want to be in a group yet.  I want to get to know an actual PERSON first, and have an actual person get to know ME as an individual, not as part of some faceless group, but apparently this other person isn't interested in that.  My psychologist suggested we get to know each other.  How come it's turning into a group thing rather than an individual thing right off the bat?  That isn't what I want or need at all.  I hate this.

Not even mentioning that I have no transport other than my parents, who work full time; I have a medical condition that keeps me close to home because I never know when it will flare up; and again, there's no benefit for me just being invisible among a lot of people.  I've gotten that my entire life.  I get that in my own family.  I get that even in my dreams.  I don't need any more of it.  I thought she was going to put me in touch with an INDIVIDUAL who was interested in getting to know ME, not in inviting me to a group.  I guess not.  Stupid me.

She didn't mention anything else about this person that made it sound like she would be interested in getting to know ME.  This person, I would love to know her and learn things from her, but what would I have to offer in return?  I have nothing to offer.  All I have is my stupid writing, and my friendship; nobody's interested in the former, and nobody needs the latter.  Everybody has all the friendship they need.  I feel like I just came along far too late in life after everyone else has paired off with friends and I'm left on my own.  No wonder everyone finds me too needy and clingy.  They have all the friendship and fulfillment they need.  I have no one, nothing to hold on to, so of course I grasp at any little chance I have, and with such desperation that people pull away.  Perhaps if I'm writing to somebody I sound really demanding because I write to them over and over and it seems like I have nothing better to do whereas they have a job and family and friends and obligations to tend to before they can get to me, but that's just it.  I DON'T have any of those things.  I have nothing to distract me from my loneliness, so I'm desperate.

Not that I ever write to people over and over and over anymore, I'm in semi-regular touch with all of one person by now and it's only a matter of time before she gets sick of me too.

And all the things the psychologist just mentioned in passing make me not want to pick up the phone and call.  The lady gave her a number, surely that must mean she would like me to call, right?  Wrong.  That reasoning has failed me over and over again.  Just because somebody gives you the means to contact them–even should THEY contact YOU first–doesn't mean squat.  An old school friend of mine saw me at the clinic a long time back and gave my mother her contact info, but I was too scared to bother.  Then she got in touch with me via letter.  I was scared but so thrilled to hear from another person.  I thought maybe she, like I, was lonely and needed somebody to talk to, but turns out she has her own family and presumably friendship enough to not need me.  I think she wrote me just out of pity; even in the first letter she mentioned how sad I had looked when she'd seen me.  Several years and false starts later, I try to get back in touch via a nice longish letter, I get a nice longish letter back, I feel so good and send her another nice longish letter, wait a few weeks, then get a stupid Christmas card that merely says she hopes I'm doing well.  No reference to a single thing in the letter, no conversation, nothing to keep the correspondence going, just that she hopes I'm doing well.  She knows full well I'm not.  I don't see why she contacted me at all.  This is just one example of many; not even going into detail about my old best friend who found me on Facebook, bothered contacting me and getting my hopes up only to tell me she's just so busy with work and school etc. she has no time to write me a nice long letter (while I see her playing games on Facebook all day)–well, WHY DID SHE CONTACT ME THEN??  You'd think that when somebody reaches out to YOU first, that means they want to communicate, but I know from repeated experience it doesn't mean that at all, at most it just means they pity you and then when they find out just how lonely and desperate you are, they bail out.  I haven't bothered writing back.  I'm sick of her.  I'm sick of all of them.  I don't want somebody's pity.  I don't want to be somebody's obligation, something broken that somebody feels compelled to "fix" and then loses interest in within days.  The reason I usually don't reply to notes/comments–I want sympathy, but from people who are actually INTERESTED in me and who I am and what I do, in an ongoing communication with me, not random people just patting my shoulder and moving on to more important things.  I want somebody to want to know ME as a person, for who I am.  Nobody wants to, though.  What purpose would it serve?

According to my psychologist, this other person has a family–she has kids and a mother.  She attends or leads lots of groups and such.  She probably has a job, I don't know, doesn't matter.  The basic thing is, she has a life and she has fulfilllment.  What could she possibly need with me contacting her?  I thought maybe this person was lonely and could use somebody to talk to, like I do, but she doesn't sound like that at all based on what little I've heard.  I don't have it in me anymore to reach out to people who are just too busy for me.  I know I can't be THE priority in anyone's life, but I'd like to be ONE of their priorities.  I want somebody else to need me as much as I need them; I want my friendship to serve a purpose, so I don't feel like I'm just demanding things and giving nothing in return.  But I have nothing to give that anyone else wants.  I hate the thought of contacting somebody who pities me and has no need of my communication, somebody who would do just fine, probably better, without me.  I've been the fifth wheel my whole life.  Nobody ever needs or wants me.  All I have to offer is my writing and my interests and my friendship and nobody needs or wants any of that.  I don't have anything else to offer.  Even with this one person I'm still in contact with, I don't see what I possibly offer her that she could need.  I know I could be a good friend to somebody who needs/wants it, but that's just it–nobody does, so I'm just superfluous.  I hate being the person everybody pities but nobody wants to actually KNOW as an individual.  I don't want a pat on the shoulder.  I want somebody to be interested in me.  Nobody is.  Nobody ever will be.  I hate that I got my hopes up yet again.  I hate that my psychologist got them up for me.  What was she thinking?

I can't go in to see her again until next month.  I've spent the entire morning debating whether to call this lady or not, because I'm so lonely and the mere thought of having one person I share interests with is so tempting, but I guess I've decided I won't bother.  I don't have it left in me.  I can't bear to call and not know who will pick up or if anyone even will or what I'll even say.  I can't possibly ever say what's really on my mind anymore–"Hi, I'm so lonely, I haven't anybody to talk to about anything I care about, I was hoping you might be the person I can talk to."  Nobody wants to hear that.  So what WOULD I say?  "Hi, I was wondering if we could get in touch?"  For what?  She gets no benefit from being in touch with me.  She has her groups and family and everything she needs.  I'm the only one who needs anything.  So I'd be the one left falling through the cracks yet again.  I don't have it left in me to keep this up.  My psychologist might think I'm stronger, that doing things over and over makes them easy, but I know from experience it isn't so.  I've been trying to make friends my whole life and by now it's just so hard I can't even bear it anymore, the constant disappointment, the knowing that people just won't care even when they say they do.  All that trying so hard, over and over, to make friends has done for me is make me hate myself.  Nobody else finds me worth their time, why should I believe I am?  I vowed to myself, and told my psychologist too, that whenever this correspondence I've got going with this one person falls through, I'm going to give up.  I don't have any heart left to try again.  33 years is more than enough to take the hint.  I'll have to find some way to just get used to being alone the rest of my life.  You think I would be used to it, by now.

So next month when I go in to see my psychologist (if I don't end up cancelled on again for another month or so), I'll just have to tell her I couldn't do it, I'm a coward, it hurts too much.  I really thought she would make it a bit easier for us to get in touch–by now I'm usually too discouraged to even WRITE to people anymore, but even that would be easier–what made her think I could possibly do such a thing as cold-call some total stranger at another person's number or go to some group meeting, when I have no reason whatsoever to believe this person even WANTS to hear from me?  She has her groups to discuss the subjects she loves.  I have nobody.  She doesn't need me.  Why did I even give my permission for her to try this, I knew from the start it would fall through yet again.  I'm just so lonely I HOPED it might not, this once…stupid.

I have to hide my tears from my parents through the evenings and cry when I'm alone.  I want to call up the psychologist and tell her no, I couldn't do it, what was she thinking, but what good would that do.  She'll just think I'm whining, which would be true, but I'm so sick of this hurting all the time.  Everybody is supposed to have SOMEBODY.  Where is my somebody?  Why can't I ever find them?  A tiny town like this, you'd think I could find just ONE person, but no.  None for me, everybody has everything they need already.  I came along too late in life.  The fifth wheel.

I told my psychologist how I just wish I could retreat into my own world–God knows it's big and intricate enough–and shut out everyone and everything, like some people do, but the thought hurts so much.  She said that people are just hardwired to want companionship.  I know that, but SOME people manage to just give up and lock themselves away and be content in their own little worlds.  Why can't I do that?  I'm not missing anything.  The world would lose nothing should I disappear.  I haven't left behind any sort of legacy anyone is interested in.  I wish so much I could just withdraw completely and stop caring.  Why can't I?  Why am I punished with wanting a friend so badly when it so obviously will never happen?

I'm going to log off now and go cry some more for the rest of the month.  I'm not even going to bother with the phone, I don't know what made me even debate myself about it.  Even if I did get as far as reaching her, it would just turn out the same way as always.

And yet again it took me numerous tries just to get the blog content editor to load.  Why can't they fix this thing or let people post in plaintext if it's going to act up so much??