Miss Understanding

Last night my daughter and her boyfriend were here....they spent the night because today they were going to  NYC to visit the Cloisters.  They just got back a short time ago, grabbed their stuff and were off out the door ...and it will be probably another long time til I see them again.

I got to thinking:
I thought of all the shirt tugging "Mommy - play with me!"s  that I was too busy to accommodate.

I thought a lot this week also about a friend...She was a very dear friend to me and had moved away...and one weekend she was going to be back.  I was to meet her at church.  Well, I did--but for some odd reason didn't make it there until church was half over.  And my friend wept.  And has never spoken to me since.  She did not respond to my letter asking her forgiveness.

I've had a problem in my life.  It is a failure to understand the impact my actions and words can have on people.  When I "blew my friend off' I honestly didn't mean any harm. I just didn't think it would matter.  And when I told that little girl to go and color while I did whatever I did back then that seemed to be so important ...it did matter.  It hurt her.  Just like I hurt my friend.

 I don't know if this is a Schizophrenic trait or if it  is just the mark of a careless person.  It is true that I do not feel things the same way as I think other people feel them.  And therefore it is hard for me to know when I'm stepping on toes or breaking their heart.  My heart feels things from a distance.  When we look at thing from a distance they are smaller.  They are less clear and seem to be less significant.  Obviously it doesn't mean they ARE insignificant --just that they look that way.  I think this accurately describes how I've approached most of the relationships in my life.

And it explains why I have pathetically few friends now.

One by one they disappear and I'm left scratching my head and wondering what the heck I've done now.
I have had a friend - the mother of a friend of my daughter's to whom I'd become close.  And then I got sick (psychotic) and when I "came to" (following my ECT experience) I had no memory of what had transpired in the time I was sick...but suddenly this friend wanted nothing to do with me.  And in that same psychosis, she was not the only friend I lost.  There were a whole group of them from my old church. The kind of friend you would drive an hour each way to see.  And I did.  But not now. They've made it clear that I"m not welcome anymore.  And I don't know why.

I'm not writing this as a sob-story, a "woe is me, I have no friends" type of thing. (and btw I DO have a couple of good friends whom I haven't chased away. Yet.)  I'm writing it to explore the way my emotions perceive events and people....In some cases I'm extremely sensitive.  But not in the good way you'd want.  It comes out as paranoia.  I pick up on a word or an inflection or catch a glance sent in my direction and I get all worked up about it...creating the reason behind those things. And the reason is never an auspicious one.  And on the other hand, I can crush a heart and not even know I"m doing it.

I think that Schizophrenics are sensitive.  Just sensitive to the wrong things.
We see meaning where there is none.
And either totally miss on some important things or else misconstrue them altogether.

It's not that I place no value on my friendships.  I value them greatly--well as much as I can value anything I suppose.  Because "value" is distant also, I think, as are most things pertaining to emotion.  I can't explain it anymore than to say that I have a chunk of value ...or love...or concern...etc.  And it is wrapped in layers and layers of cotton batting.   Doesn't mean it's not there. Just that it muffles everything coming in....and makes what's in there hard to perceive.