At the risk of ending up talking to myself I will post this here, since it seems to be the most relevant place...I wrote this in my journal yesterday. Like most people I have a gap between therapy sessions right now, and this is hard stuff to just hold on to by myself for a couple of weeks.

At the mall today to buy some new snow boots, the place was crawling with high-school kids. Teenage girls, when I pass by them, make me cringe and avert my eyes. I think a normal person my age (49) would not react that way.

On my way home I was thinking about how I was forbidden to go to the mall after school. The couple of times I did I got in big trouble because it meant I was late getting supper on the table. That reminded me of something I read recently:

"The schizoid patient's subjective experience is not that of being a vital cog in the family system...rather, the experience is that of being a dehumanized, depersonalized function that can be called on the serve a purpose, any purpose and then can be consigned again to the back shelf until another service or function is required" That is from Masterson & Klein's Disorders of the Self..., the chapter on intrapsychic structures.)

My purpose was to cook supper 5 days a week and do the dishes afterwards, making sure to also sweep the kitchen floor. Weekends I was required to dust and vacuum the whole house, clean the bathrooms, and do the laundry including the ironing. If I did not do these things willingly, properly and promptly, there was hell to pay.

Other than all of that I really felt I was no use to anyone in my family. No one was at all interested in me, for me.

I highlighted the above quote the first time I read it, but I wasn't sure if it really fit. Today the truth of it is making me cry.

I have been connecting with a lot of stuff about my adolescence lately...I think it was the worst few years of my life.

Thanks for 'listening'.