Wondering

So, when someone does something that kinda hurts, we get told not to take it personally.  How are we supposed to take it, then?  I mean, I'm a person - at least I was at one time - so there's not much other way I could take it, is there?  What that usually means, it seems to me, is more like "oh, that bothered you?  If I acknowledge that, then I'll have to apologize and face the fact that I screwed up, and I don't want to do that, so I'll just tell you you're being too sensitive and not to take it personally so I can go on my merry way and feel smug and somewhat offended myself because you dared to let me know I might have affected you negatively."  It somehow works out that I end up apologizing to people because *they* hurt *me.*  Doesn't seem right, does it?


What am I talking about?  Well, I have ... I would say "friends" but these days I'm not so sure ... I have people I know on FB -- not only people I've met online, but also people I really know out in the maybe-real world -- and the other day after a long time of not posting on FB, I decided to give it a go again, wrote one of these folks a message, wished her a happy birthday, and then later, much later, she appeared online, so I used the chat to say hi and she instantly dropped offline.  Not a word in reply to my message, not a thanks for the birthday wish, and then vanishes when I say hi.  OK, so she's done this kind of thing before, but at this time when I've been so withdrawn and isolated, depressed to the point of having to consciously fight against Darkness (with a capital DARK), to have her - one of the few people I felt I could talk to on more than a small-talk level - ignore me completely for a day and then drop out of sight HURT.  Like hell.  So after crying a while, I went off to bed.  And then there's today.  A very long-time friend, whom I haven't had a chance to talk to for a while, is online at FB when I took a deep breath and signed in, determined to give this reaching out thing another shot.  She's online, I say hi ... and yeah, she ignores me, too.  This is someone I've given years of my life to, sacrificed a lot to do things with and for, someone I let dictate the terms of our relationship (there's that "be in stasis until I decide you're worth bothering with for a few minutes if it's convenient" thing again), someone I had forgiven over and over (to be fair, I'm sure she's forgiven me a lot, too), someone I *LOVE* - and she's got to know that the man in my life, the man with whom I've spent more than 40 years, is about to ship out to a fucking war zone.  And nothing.  Not even a "hi, I can't talk right now."  Not even a "go screw yourself".  Nothing.


Is it any wonder I feel alone?


I'm not sure I've got the strength left to keep trying to break out of this isolation.  It's too painful.  And everything I try (and, hey, I'm not out there being a whining sniveling pest, ok?  I'm waving cheerily) just confirms that the outside world isn't a good place for me, that the best thing for me to do is just crawl back into the cave and whimper by the fire by myself.  I go back and forth between hurt and anger.  I've spent years growing more and more inward-turned and I'm not sure I can continue to try to move out of that state if I keep getting hurt like this.  


In my bleaker moments over the last couple of years, I had re-defined some things:
    Trust - handing the jar of vaseline to the person standing there with a broom handle saying "bend over"
    Faith - a way to deceive people in large groups
    Friend - a traitor who hasn't seen the right opening yet
    Family - "friends" with more chances


I don't like being this way.  I really don't.  I've been fighting SO hard to turn myself around.  But I'm not sure anymore that it's even worth it.


No, nothing bad is going to happen to me.  I'm not going to do myself a mischief.  At my very deepest level of despair (guess what, kiddies, this is me *better* than I was months ago), when that thought was a constant companion ("Hello, darkness, my old friend..."), I stopped to consider the effect that would have on other people - puts the whole "don't take it personally" thing in sharp relief, that -- and determined I would NOT under any circumstances let my granddaughter grow up thinking I didn't love her enough to live.  So, yeah, I'm here until someone else punches my ticket.  I'm trying to find a way beyond the old hillbilly thing (sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I jest sits) to do that, to live, to have a life that isn't confined to the space inside my skull.  So far, it's not working so well.