Alone In A Crowd

Left to my own devices I stay inside my head, and that is not a very friendly place for me to be. The dominant voice in there is extremely negative, I dare say she hates me; she bullies the other voice that tries to get a word in edge-wise when things get out of hand. There is the me that the outside world sees, the pretty, totally-put-together, smart and capable woman who looks 10 years younger than her real age...and then there is the real me, the girl who is profoundly sad and lonely, who cries a lot and at worst believes she should be punished for being so wicked and at best believes she deserves nothing. I'm scared. Scared every day that people will find out what a fraud I am.

With all due respect to Barbra, I am a person who needs people and I don't feel the least bit lucky. I've lost some very important satelites this year and without their signals I am feeling quite lost. I'm about to lose another from my time zone but I'm hopeful she'll still be able to broadcast from her new sector of the sky. According to a popular social networking site and my email contact list, I have well over 100 friends, yet I feel alone. I feel disconnected from almost everyone, and the one person I don't feel disconnected from is many hundreds of miles away in another country.

Even the shallow social constructs of the workplace are not available to me as a consultant. I am either working at home, alone, or I am sitting in a strange office for the day while I work at a client site. I have a couple of long-term clients that I visit regularly, at one I even have a designated cube that I have decorated with a few horse pictures, but I do not belong anywhere, I am not an employee and therefore are treated very differently than those around me.

Riding, in particular the type of riding I do, English and training to do show jumping, is for the most part a solitary endeavor. I admire and like the other riders at the farm, and I'm sure they admire and like me too, but we are not friends. We don't know anything about each other outside of what we see and discuss vis a vis our horses. Perhaps this is best, as I've already related, if they did know the real me they would probably shun me.

Since the beginning of the summer, in addition to the things I've already related, two people I knew died, I was evacuated from my home for 3 days because of a fire and my husband lost his job. In short, I'm a mess. I'm plagued by headaches, stomach issues and even had a panic attack recently. I tried to see my old doctor last week for the endometriosis but apparently I am not smart enough to navigate the health care system here, even though I've lived here for 20 years. She wasn't in my "group", so I have to start all over tomorrow, find a new doctor, make another appointment and probably wait another month. The good news is that now it only hurts when I ride. Small comfort.

I'm tempted to turn off the comments so the entire internet won't think I posted this as a pathetic means to gather support. Even more pathetic, I do need your support, even if you don't know me. More than that, I just needed to write this down. I can't just deal with one problem at a time, instead, when I am in crisis, I open up my Chest of Horrors and drag out lots of other things from my past, since they are all related. I pile them on top of my head until I topple over like the Flintstone's car when the bell-hop puts the plate of ribs on the window. I've never gotten over anything or anyone.

I will be OK. All I can do is keep repeating that until I believe it.