Inside the mind of loneliness.

          How do you start explaining something you may never really, fully understand. I guess I will start at the beginning. Growing up home-schooled has both it's advantages and disadvantages. I will always be grateful for the things instilled in me due to being home-schooled and I wouldn't change it for the world, but there are things that will always be (or at least feel) lacking. I didn't have a lot of activities aside from church growing up. My whole world was family, church and repeat. At age 8 I received my first real social activity: girls softball. This is when I truly began to realize I was somehow different. I still remember feeling like I was watching more than I was involved in the friendships surrounding my softball team. Up until this point my only (out of family) social interaction was with kids at church, I had people I hung out with at church, and I do believe that I felt I had friends, But there were no slumber parties or play dates, or any outside of church interaction. This is when I started feeling as though something was wrong with me. Why didn't I get the other girls jokes? Why didn't they think I was fun? Why didn't anyone get excited to see me? Or want to hangout after practice with me? What was wrong with me? 

  

         I only did softball for one season (mostly due to short stop getting pounded in the eye with a softball, causing it to swell up the size of the softball, and I liked my face how it was.) I believe during this time my mother started working at a day care where she took me and my younger sister with her. That as well didn't last long and didn't accrue any friendships or new social skills. After that it was back to home and church for a while. 

       At the age of 11 (I believe) my mother started working at the church day care and again took me and my younger sister with her. This is also the point in which those children at church I perceived to be my "friends" realized I wasn't a boy like them and I wasn't a pretty, dressy girl either. So now began the fun task of trying to see where I fit. I'd always been a tom boy up until this point and all my church "friends" were boys. When 6th grade started the boys didn't want to be "friends" with girls anymore because now girls were "cute". As I struggled to find my place I started feeling more and more depressed and confused. 

         I started staying home more by myself and started feeling alone, confused, and depressed. I'd go to church and see the kids my age with their little groups of friends and hear their stories of going out together and having sleep overs. Slowly this darkness seemed to creep over me. Life seemed so empty and alone. I was fully aware how blessed I was to have a roof over my head and a great family. I didn't really feel like my life was so bad, but still I felt alone and dark inside. Eventually this dark feeling of emptiness turned to a lack of desire to live at all. Thoughts of suicide became a daily thing and a daily struggle to fight against. Now I have always been a very analytical person, always in my head all the time, so the battle of "Why am I so depressed?" and "Why do I feel this way?" began. I truly didn't feel like I had a real reason to be upset the way I was 24/7. This made me feel so much worse. Why can't I be happy? Why can't I make these feelings stop? Why can't I just be better? Luckily my family meant the world to me and though my imagination was constantly reeling with different ways I could easily end my life, I could never put them through that. I spent countless days sitting against my bedroom door trying to remember what it was like to be happy. Countless nights awake in bed trying to figure out what put me in this hole. It got to the point I had no hope in anything anymore. I kept asking God why he was letting me feel this way, what did I do to deserve this pain? I stopped caring. I stopped trying to do things because I 100% felt like everything was going to fail. This was also the time I decided to stop celebrating my birthday due to the 3rd or 4th year in a row that no one attended my parties. Not only did they not attend but they were all invited and attended the birthday parties or my previously mentioned "friend" from churches parties, which somehow were always the same day as mine (even though our birthdays were 20 days apart). After finally expressing to my mother the seriousness of my situation I was put in counseling. The majority of my therapy was spent with me self analyzing my entire situation, correctly I might add, until the therapist realized the cause of my situation: Chemical depression. The sole cause of my predicament was a simple chemical imbalance and after verification from a psychiatrist I was placed on Prozac. 2 weeks later I was happy as a bee. Back to life I went.

          For awhile I actually had a friend here and there. I also started having "boyfriends", but I still felt like I was watching more than really being there. See, as I mentioned earlier, I'm in my head, A LOT. What I mean by this is: I'm constantly thinking, about everything. i.e. "that guy is looking over here what is he thinking

" "how does my outfit look right now" "did I just say the right thing?" "they are walking away......am I supposed to follow?" "how long do I wait to text back". These things are going through my head, all the time, at the same time. They still are. So even though for a short period I had 1 friend here for awhile and 1 friend there for awhile, they never lasted, and I never felt like I actually "got it". I still felt like something was wrong with me. What was I missing?

         Jr. High came and went. Lots of feeling left out, being rejected. For a short while I tried to be something I wasn't to fit in with the other girls at church and after being lied to and left out, I went back to me because it made no difference anyway. I'd try to pop in and out of conversations to see if I'd get a bite, but mostly I felt awkward afterwards life I was being weird or something. Towards the end we changed churches and this new one was worse. It was a much wealthier congregation and the majority had been there since birth, as I had been at the previous church. I watched my sister make friends easily my whole life, and here it was the same. I started getting labeled the one who talked to much due to a failed dating relationship. Again I was watching everyone else live their seemingly awesome lives.Why did everyone seem to have friends so easily? What was wrong with me? These questions constantly haunted me. I'd ask people all the time if I was doing something wrong but no one would tell me. It was always "nothings wrong". OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING IS WRONG. Why wouldn't anyone help me? I just wanted help. Just one bit of advice from someone who seemed to "get" whatever it was I wasn't "Getting". Did they not understand how HUGE an issue this was for me? A 14 or 15 year old girl who has never felt truly accepted or belonging somewhere. 

         Now after much persuasion I convinced my parents to allow me to attend public school for my sophomore year of high school. Again, sad to say, I excelled in my classes but I never had someone ask for my number so we could hang out. No invites to go somewhere. Nothing. I began completely enthralling myself with boyfriends. See boyfriends were the one relationship I seemed to get. I didn't question the amount of mobile communication we had. I didn't question whether they wanted to hangout. I always thought "hey they chose solely me so they must want me around a lot". So began my continuous string of boyfriends. Some were giant mistakes, some were good, some caused huge life altering situations and some just came and went. I never stayed single longer than a week or two, but the majority of my relationships lasted a good 3 months to a year. I generally kind of adopted my boyfriends friends as my own, in turn losing them once the boyfriend was gone. They weren't really my friends, and I knew that from day 1, But they were people I got to be around often. So I made it through high school in one piece, still in my same predicament, but in one piece.

        College, 10 hours away from home, not a single sole I've met before. Man I loved Texas tech, I loved my classes, I loved my job (in the major dorm "cafeteria"), I even met some people I would consider my friends for a time, But God had a different plan for me. I still remember walking across the library parking lot and knowing inside God was telling me I needed to be a stay at home mom one day, that was my calling. Now being intelligent I knew for a fact that staying at Tech would prevent me from ever being a stay at home mom due to the fact that I failed to receive any scholarships at all and was solely using loans. So after one amazing semester I went home. Back to life. I tried finishing school at San Jacinto community college but knew it wasn't right for me. So after a few semesters of working my way through college (paying in cash from my numerous jobs) I chose to leave, only to come back if it was God's will.  

          A few years of this and that, serious relationship here and there. I decided to work 3 jobs and move out on my own to forward my life. This is when I made Thomas Jason Sweeney, you can ask me how that came about, and now we are married with a baby. During our marriage I have had a "friend" here and there, never for very long. T.J. and I have had numerous conversations about my social situation, picking it apart and comparing notes. T.J. has had the same best friends since Jr. High and has his set days where he hangs out with them every week, this obviously leaves me a bit envious at times of his social situation. 

       So here I am. Alone, in a way. My Savior is complete. My family is complete. My Husband is complete. My child is complete. But still is that section inside that is still alone. That hole that has yet to be filled, as it were. I have always known in God's time he will place that someone or multiple someone's in my life. And I wait until then. But here is your look inside. Every day I go someplace, whether it be work, or church, or some other random social location, and I watch. I watch the conversations and the interactions. I watch the facial expressions and the tones of voices. I study the social cues going on around me. Hoping that one day I will finally get it. 

        Recently I have discovered something I know will follow me forever: My expectation of friendship will always be the same expectation I had as a 6th grade girl listening to the activities shared between friends in a crowded room. I will always long for the sleepovers, the constant texting, the inside jokes, the everyday spent together. I will always have the expectation of friendship being your "bestie" wanting to be around as much as your mothers allowed. I will have to remind myself everyday that I missed that chance, I'm an adult now and adult friendships are different. Adults have completely different responsibilities outside of when your going to hangout next. Their friend isn't their number one priority anymore. We have spouses and families and children to keep up with. We have jobs and errands and cleaning to attend to. Life gets away from us so easily now. I have to remind myself when I see these people in my daily activities that I am only getting one tiny glimpse at their life, and though it may seem like they have a "bestie" and it may feel like they must see each other constantly and communicate constantly, maybe they don't. But I can't help but feel like their lives are fuller than mine, that they do have someone they call once a day and see twice a week. That they have those people that they call up for dinner together a couple times a month. I can't help but feel like someone should be calling me to do something, ANYTHING, EVER. Do people realize It's me, my husband, and my family? Can they see that I have no friends? Can they see how excited I get for the chance to do anything with them, at all? Can they see that just talking to me whenever you just happen to see me for a period of time isn't friendship? Why do people think that a friendship of convenience isn't a friendship? Am I the one that is wrong? Should I only expect people to talk to me because I just happen to be in the same room as them?

         I still don't have any answers. I still feel alone in that small place inside. I still long for the day I feel relaxed in a group setting and my whole social life doesn't depend on this one possible interaction. I still look at those people who are talking to their, obvious, friends and wonder what that feels like. Will my social pitfalls hinder the social life of my wonderful Josie Lin? Did being home schooled even have anything to do with it? Is it just something in me? Will God eventually give me this particular thing I have longed for my whole life? Will this long road ever end? I have picked my brain apart and put it back together again so many, many times looking for the answers to my long lonely path to no end. Maybe one day it will just click, Maybe one day someone will tell me what it is that I must be doing wrong. Maybe one day I will just meet someone just like me and we can go through this path together. Until then I will continue to cling to the love and joy I have in my Savior, my family, my wonderful husband, and my amazing child. One day maybe someone will  understand. One day.