As a kid I learned that the world is a dangerous place and the safest place was by myself. After all nobody else really cares for me anyway.<\/p>\n
I was the youngest child in a family where I had 5 siblings. When I came along my oldest brother had already left home, and my oldest sister left home by the time I turned 3. I had another brother and sister who were more that 6 years older than I. My oldest sister took care of me from the time I was a baby and I remember the deep feelings of abandonment the first time I went to her bedroom and she was no longer there.<\/p>\n
My dad favorite saying was that “Children should be seen and not heard”. In my loneliness I would cry as a kid. My dad would say “Stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”. My mom would say “Just quit feeling sorry for yourself”. This was the most “comfort” I ever received as a kid.<\/p>\n
Growing up, I was always too little to be included in anything that my brother or sister did and I can remember just wanting to feel included. I don’t remember any other kids around my age so I mostly just stayed by myself. I do remember my older brother teaching me to read before I started school. We had no kindergarten so I started school in first grade a few weeks before my sixth birthday. I attended school in Grants Pass, Oregon for a few months then my family moved to Portland, Oregon and I had to re-start first grade there in January.<\/p>\n
I was one of the smartest kids in school and had a quick wit. I came into a class that had already had a chance to form friendships or cliques, and I felt like an outsider so I continued to be withdrawn. I was different than everybody else and so I never felt like I fit in, or was accepted. I was the only ‘Preacher’s Kid’. I used NO profanity of any kind. We didn’t watch any sports at home. In 1964 during the presidential campaign I happened to mention that my father was voting for Barry Goldwater and I was physically carried off the playground and bullied by the kids of the LBJ supporters. I was also the target of other bullies too.<\/p>\n
These incidents caused me to withdraw even more. It was not safe to share my opinion or anything with others. At home I stayed by myself tin the basement. I had my own TV to watch and I taught myself electronics and built a few projects in the basement. There was only one kid in my neighborhood near my age and he was a year older than I and in the next grade ahead of me. His parents took him on vacations, cooked steaks on the grill in his backyard sometimes, and I only wished that I could do things like that. I never had a steak until after I had left home. We never took any family vacations. I don’t even remember my dad ever having more than a day off work!<\/p>\n
By the time I became a teenager I had had enough. I didn’t really believe in God at the time. Atheism was what was taught in school. So one day I prayed a desperate prayer. I prayed “God if you are really alive, I NEED to know you. If you don’t exist, I have no place here. I can’t live if all I am is evolved green goo and there is no life except this.” I knew that apart from God there is no meaning to life at all. Within a year of praying that prayer, God answered me.<\/p>\n
Even today, decades later, I struggle with feelings of being left out. Actually I am uncomfortable many times when I am<\/em> included. I crave attention but don’t know what to do when it is given to me. Isolation is so much easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a kid I learned that the world is a dangerous place and the safest place was by myself. After all nobody else really cares for me anyway. I was the youngest child in a family where I had 5 siblings. When I came along my oldest brother had already left home, and my oldest … Continue reading Coping skills learned as a child.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-12-setps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwg1wga.recoverme.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}