Since "2008" has officially begun I have some serious issues to address. My memory/recall of what in the hell happened to me is the first. I want to get better and I think this is the first step on that path.

I want to get better, I want a life and friends and all the things that go with it! Right now my only friends are the people on this forum. That is why I got so pissy this Christmas. The holidays were here and all my friends were gone. I took it as they did not care about me. This was some seriuosly warped thinking. But it does explain a lot and has made me realize that I've got some serious work to do this year

Through this forum I have come to realized that I CAN NOT continue my isolation.
This is not only unhealthy, but it is also dangerous for me.

I say dangerous because my future rests on my ablility to interact with people and have them around me. I am completely and totally dependent on my mother for all of my social and emotional needs.

If I do not begin now to develope a circle of people around me I am going to be in serious trouble when her time comes. She is 83 and I need to face this fact of life. I am not trying to be morbid. I am finally looking at this as a fact of MY life.

If I do not begin to address this major issue in my life and get the agoraphobia under some kind of managable control I will be in serious trouble. Just the thought of what this is going to require has set my anxiety alarm off. Isolation is never healthy. At least, at this point, I have Mom here to interact with. What is going to happen when I don't? I must get back into the real world.

So where to begin? Addressing my trauma may be the key---maybe not. But I need to start somewhere and that is as good a place to start as any.

When I realized that I depend completely on the forum for my contact with people it scared me beyond words. This is not good, especially for my mental state. I no longer have any people or social skills. I do not know how to act around people anymore. While it has been a very long time since I have interacted with anyone in the outside world on a one to one basis I do know that I tend to say inappropriate things. This was tactfully pointed out by my mom.

I get so nervous that I ramble, loudly, about anything. I interupt people all the time and am taken as just simply being a very rude person. And I am not. I just don't know what to act in public anymore. And to be perfectly honest, I don't think I want to deal with people. Maybe I should just work on being comfortable shopping, taking myself out to dinner or going to a movie and forget about having people in my life. HUM Sound good to me