The moment you realize how much of your life experience is hopelessly interlaced

My family has never been close. I was an only child. While my parents were not overly involved in my life, their love for me was over-protective. They isolated me from the world and most social activity. So I came to cling to them, suffering from fear of abandonment from a very young age. I never really believed them when they said they were not going to die for a really, really long time, but all little kids wear out and fall asleep eventually.

I was not allowed to sleep over at other people's houses much, and because of this insulation, I was always uncomfortable doing so, even when it was what I wanted to do. Because of a car wreck I was in at 15, my parents refused to help me get my license out of fear, so I didn't get it until I was 19 and a junior in college.

I didn't make any real friends until I left my parents and went off to college at 16, whereupon I fell right into another co-dependant relationship for four more years. After that, I have established myself again as being self-sufficient, independant and completely isolated emotionally, physically and otherwise, which was pretty much the way I'd been my whole life.

Now I have to link all these behaviors and have found that they have threaded into so many facets of my life that I can't seem to escape them. I have a very hard time allowing people to get close to me, or rather, close to me for the long haul; I am very quick to form strong bonds but will drop them at a moment's notice out of fear and self-defeat. People have to work that much harder to prove themselves to me. I push people away and contend that I don't need them. I get defensive when people tell me that I have problems. I run away from people. I live alone and don't miss people except when I want to do something social.

I have close friends and I love them dearly, but they've always been far away. I've never had anyone I love die on me, so I don't always know to appreciate what I have.

Being self-sufficient isn't bad. Being able to take care of yourself is far from a detriment. It's the self-defeating mentality that no one could love me as I am, that anyone will want to put up with all this baggage.

And then to realize all this now is pretty intense.

Realization is the first step to progress. Once the issue is acknowledged, it can then be confronted and life can be altered in a positive manner accordingly.

For intance, after dropping out of high school, settling for any administrative job that happened to come my way, quitting dance class, quitting creative writing class, etc... I realized that I am a quitter and exceptionally lazy. It occurred to me that a pattern was forming and I was trapped, never moving forward, yet abhorring stagnation. That is why I am going to finally (after having been out of school since I dropped out and got my GED... 5 years), ease myself into college.

Another realization I came to just a few months ago was that I was enduring mild (or not-so-mild, it's relative I suppose)anxiety when it came to going out in public on my own. I would not go places if another person was not accompanying me. I believe it was caused by the fear and paranoia that arose when I was mugged a few years ago (along with other negative mind altering experiences which I'd rather not discuss right now). I overcame it by forcing myself to do little things like go to a coffee shop by myself to read or write, I also started going to parties and art openings alone too (like I did before all this came into play).

It's never hopeless, it just takes long periods of soul searching and looking within for answers, not thinking from the ego, but thinking at a deeper level. Writing whatever flows at night is a good thing to do.

I'm sure I'm stemming of topic, but it sort of goes along with what I've been experiencing and the realizations that have come to me as of late...

Good luck Templeton with dealing with your issues, good luck everyone, for no life is perfect.