Dear Roger: Cave Dwelling For A Reason

I dont like most people. You know that. People who I have let into my rather insular existence know that, and the world around me picks up on it rather quickly. I have my reasons. When you have been either shit on or brutalized by a large chunk of the world, it tends to color your opinion of things. I prefer to just tend my own knitting, stay in my hidey hole and write, communicating with the world around me via social media or in vary limited social engagements like concerts. I pretty much trust no one, including family. The ones I trusted implicitly are all dead and everyone else seems to have an angle or something they want. I have cut off most of my family and only communicate with my sister, and that is maybe twice a month. Its not the healthiest of lives, but I really prefer it. It allows me time to focus on my writing and my art and it just keeps me from getting fucked over time and time again and from seeing things happen that enrage me, like my grandparents things being sold or given away, or my pleas for pictures of my grandparents or you being ignored repeatedly. I'm not a nice person, but then again I am the product of my experiences.

Its been a shit week around here that has made me want to retreat even further into my social isolation, but I am trying to resist the urge. I have been focusing on my writing and I managed to finish up a story that I had been working on for close to a year. I also successfully merged it with 2 of my other stories and now have managed to create an almost novel length story with characters that people got really emotionally invested in. I am finishing up the final part of it this month and I have already started posting a new story that I had put on the back burner while I had worked on how to merge the three I had been struggling with. I woke up this morning to an email box that was overflowing with positive reviews and author alerts and favorites. It was a great way to start the day. I've been sick the past few days with some hideous stomach bug that left me barfing and so damn weak I could hardly get up off the couch, but of course with 3 kids to myself after the eldest bailed on me. I'm still pretty shaky, but I am determined to clean house today and emerge from isolation just a little bit. If I keep allowing myself to stay in, I will just continue to do so and it will become a nasty circle of enabling behavior. I'm already hyper vigilant again and just trying to ramp that back down has been a challenge. Checking windows, doors, kids, watching people, making sure Major Jack is handy, its all just signs that I need a vacation maybe a concert so I can go and get my ya ya's out.