Messages

Hi there. Just reading your post a few weeks later. I hope you were able to come to peace about the situation. For what it's worth I don't think you were sabotaging your relationship. In my mind sabotage has intention behind it, and living with the consequences of trauma isn't something you're doing intentionally. I hope you're doing better.   

Hi all. I've just had a painful realization about myself and how I relate to community. I thought for a long time that the solution for my loneliness and isolation was community. In the past I found community either in work relationships or friend groups. What I learned over time, however, was that I valued those communities much more than I was valued.

One example was when I moved away from a group of work friends and we happened to all come together at a conference some time later. These were people I considered my friends. I thought they cared about me. But not one of them, including someone who I thought was one of my best friends, made any effort to reach out and connect with me at the conference. It broke my heart. I've got lots of examples of this including being treated terribly and bullied by people I thought were my friends. So I struggle in groups.

I've been severely isolated much of my life mostly because relationships with people are so painful. I thought, however, more recently that community would be a solution to this. A few months back I moved into an intentional community. I was really excited. I thought this was the end of feeling isolated. This situation has turned into near constant stress and trauma of having to work toward being part of a community. It's only been four months, and I am so unhappy here. I would move if I could afford it. It mostly just feels like living in close quarters with people is a lot of giving up what's important to you without getting much of anything back. There is a lack of engagement with my messages in the community text thread, which somehow feels the worst, in addition to several other difficult situations.

I know much of my difficulty is unresolved trauma but healing doesn't happen instantly, and for me, it has been excruciatingly slow.  For now I will be intentionally isolating to protect myself from more retraumatizaiton. Maybe in the future I will have healed enough to have capacity for community dynamics. I currently don't. Right now I need to recover from the most recent trauma that made me realize I don't have the strength for community. And that at the present moment community mostly does more damage. This was a painful realization.

It feels better to get this out though. Thank you all for listening.