@tyme
That sounds so hard @MJG017 . It's like you've grown up knowing you aren't really 'part' of 'them'. As much as people tell you to be happy that you are loved, I feel that having a sense of belonging is crucial to one's wellbeing.
Not that many people told me that, but it's hard to trust people when you feel so separated from everyone. You grow up seeing everyone with their families and being so close, you notice how a lot of them look similar. You look at yourself, and your own 'family' and you think "what is wrong with me?!", "Why don't i have that?", "What did I do wrong?". Ask a kid growing up with these questions and no one notices you have them, so no one tells you otherwise, what other conclusion can a child form? You're a family of one and families look after each other, so you have to take care of yourself. No one else will do it or can be trusted to do it. It took me the best part of 50 years to start to think differently.
I think the lack of real grief comes from that. You never get any emotion support and no one really seems to care how you're feeling so lesson number 2 is learnt. Feelings are never displayed. You have feelings, and see how you life is going compared to everyone else and assume feelings are bad and should be buried as deep as they can be forced. That's what everyone else does surely, because on one ever shows them to you. And I must try harder to be like everyone else! At any cost! How can anyone love me if i'm not like everyone else?
As you get older and that lack of trust to let anyone close turns those lessons into self-fulfilling prophecies. Which reinforces them and the worse the loneliness gets, the more the rules are reinforced and the deeper it gets.
If you're really, really lucky one day you meet someone who makes you doubt the rules for the first time. that downward spiral stops and you take the pause to slowly start to see the truth. But so much damage is done. You know you'll never climb out of the hole you've made for yourself, but you try to climb as much as you can anyway because anything else is giving up. And if obeying those rules all your life has taught you anything it's never give up! Even when it makes no sense to keep going a certain way you never give up.
Or... maybe 8 hours sleep in the past 48 hours is having an effect. 😄
