In my head I tend to classify how much I can ask from people. There are some people I can ask a lot from and some people… not so much. There are some people who can provide physical support but no emotional support and there are some people who can provide emotional support via the computer but they really can’t take being in a room with me.

I’ve learned how to have space in my life for people having the kind of relationship with me they can handle having. I’m trying to not beat myself up over these limits that other people have. The limits aren’t about me. Life is complicated for everyone and I’m kind of like a hurricane in motion sometimes. I know that I overwhelm people. I’m much better at containing it than I used to be.

I need a new box for relationships. I touched on this yesterday and then didn’t follow up on it, not really. Community members. It’s not the same as acquaintance and it sure isn’t friend.

For a while I was good, emotionally, at partitioning the home school group people. I’m not there to make friends for me. I’m there so my kids can grow up around people.

I haven’t been good at it for a while. I culled a few people and tried to shove them into the friend bucket and I’m afraid I shot myself in the foot.

I expected things I had no right to expect. That’s going to hurt me over and over and over. Of course the group exists to perpetuate itself at the expense of individual members. Duh. That’s how systems work. I shouldn’t have believed that I… was anything other than a cog in the system. Cogs aren’t protected. Cogs are replaceable.

There has to be space for community members. I can’t ask them for anything. But they have stood near me for years and that means they think they know me. Mostly… not so much. They don’t want to know me. If they get to know me, if I try to befriend them… it will end in them not talking to me any more.

This is not my first rodeo.

I’m going to keep burning whatever bridges I burn with writing. It keeps me from cutting. I talk to Noah about the stuff I really can’t write about.

I’m not as alone as I feel. Things have improved. Things are better. I need to stop expecting people to care about me and be ok with nodding from the far side of the park.

That’s what people want.