I'm over 50 and have never had anyone love me

[EdenJoy1]

It's sad,  and it's taken its toll. I am watching a lot of families on YT and how they interact, how the parents are with their children and am still in a state of being on the one hand bewildered and the other bereft that this wasn't my experience, but was everything but. On Saturday I had a major depressive state where I was praying and crying, then had to look at some of my baby photographs. Maybe I missed something. I went through them again, all of them in a bag, just tossed in there, something like my inner child, it's there - she's there - but tossed in. And I'm looking at my baby eyes and they go from being vacant to terror and sadness. My father hated me and my mother pitied me. But she did feed me and while dealing with her life and depression and subsequent divorce from him, she parentified me and some point though I regressed. Then ate to compensate. I would hoard food. Lie and steal. I had no one to comfort me. It was a nightmare. There were report cards from nursery school and grade school where it was noted that I wasn't attentive and dreaming. Dissociating and disruptive - that was my mode in school. Nobody did ever rescue me. I was thrown to the wolves. Basically. How do you emerge from that/

[woodsgnome]

I sense the utter pain, desolation and confusion in your sharing here. That's sad, but also it's important that you just let it rip. It hurts even more having traveled loneliness' path. It's hard -- but important to see if we can take a step towards finding help or at least someone to hear us out.

I don't know what to say, but that's so usual in these situations. It's kinda like speaking in a vacuum. What I do know is there have been peeks out from the valley of despair. Somehow something, a glimmer of hope perhaps, survives -- an interest, a passion, a feeling that, though vague, seems to point in another direction.

The only certainty I found was more uncertainty. I know that may not sound great, but in my own stumbles it's all I ever found. I'm just hoping you'll find the gift of you for the world to appreciate. But at least you've come on here and made a start, even if it seems very vulnerable for the moment. It's not perfect, but it's the start of emerging from the wound.

[EdenJoy1]

Yes. I just have to leave a trail. My life is winding down. Just letting words escape. Thanks you woodsgnome. Your presence is comforting.