This was the part that I was never able to get over from all of that. Not that I'm anti-social, or unable to be nice to people, but I'm never able to feel like I have a place in the relationship. I have an ungodly hard time making friendsbecause I just hit an emotional wall when trying to figure out how to hold up my end of that process. I'm terrible at small talk, and I never feel like the person I'm meeting would be interested in me enough to want to be friends. I have a friend back home that can meet somebody and, five minutes later, you'd swear he's been lifelong friends with them. He's very outgoing, and funny, and he can invite somebody to go do something andeven though they've just metit seems totally natural. I watch him do that, and I've no clue how he does it.
That mixes with another thing that ended up becoming part of my personality: I never, ever feel like I belong to any sort of group. No matter who it is or what the circumstances, I feel like I don't belong. You could have a situation where, say, there's a group specifically for redheads to get together against all of the non-redheads in the world, and I could be at that meeting, and feel like I wasn't supposed to be there and that they don't want me around. *laughs* Part of me can take it all in stride, but on the other, it's really tough. I can never feel like I'm wanted or welcome in a group, and that of course then affects my ability to make friends (because how can I make friends with people if I always feel like a third wheel).
I didn't mean to make this some big dramatic thing or anythingit's just that the conversation about what happened to you got me to thinking about that. Sometimes we really do take for granted how things that happened to us growing up shape and affect us as who we turn out to be. It's not that I like thinking of myself as a victim or wanting to blame anybody, but I also can't help but wonder how my life had been different if I had been able to act a different way as a child, or if my experiences had been better.
At the same time, I know so many people who have it far worse than I do, so on some level I have to be happy with the fact that I'm not worse off than I could be. *heh*