A huge sad reason you all are so important to me.
This will be the first of two posts sharing a very sad part of my journey, sad only in the way it was necessary to open the incredible door that you all have opened in their staid.
The two people that I should be closest to, ( my sister Jill whose boyfriend lives in St Louis, and my roommates mom Tracy, along with her 22y/o today son Toby,)
Have and are almost completely emotionally detached due to their own issues with various forms of neglect and abuse.
My sister is a classic Stockholm Syndrome case as she worshipped her primary abuser (my dad) to his dying day.
Tracy on the other hand, suffered emotional neglect and abuse from her dad, and hates him passionately but shut herself off to any emotional intimacy many years ago and cannot see herself in anyone else's emotional pain as of course that would expose her own and force an acknowledgement of some specific events unknown to all others. She also passed these traits onto her son's the old fashioned way. She did unto them.....
My greatest frustration is that I know that I can't reasonably ask them for anything that resembles emotional support or comfort.
A perfect example is my older sister, who was here and updated Debm55 among a small group of friends so that they took would be able to update a slightly larger (except in your case a much larger) group of people. She still calls every few days to say hi and get what has become a progress report. Well, there's no progress currently and when I spoke to her today, she sounded almost agitated because somewhere in her thinking, she was done with this part of the downside of having a renewed brother sister relationship. (We hadn't spoken in 30 years) Until I found her doing a people search kind of thing. That was almost a year ago and she would come down every couple of months to bring 3 day old fresh bread and that seemed to fulfill her sense of duty to me. She was at the hospital the day of surgery and came the next two days for a few hours each day. She then made it known that she couldn't afford to come down to help during the recovery and that she'd be next available to see me sometime in April.
She is a retired Police officer who took advantage of the Ferguson, MO unrest to maximize her pension by pounding the overtime, Which certainly was her right as that was the way the system worked. All to say that she felt she had done her duty as my sister and helping me as her destitute opposite with maybe spending a weekend her or there during my recovery was a bridge too far. I tried calling her at 845am CST this morning and the call didn't get answered because in her words, she likes to sleep in.
I'm getting sadder and angrier as I write this so I need to stop.
Tracy just sent a response to the following two texts that I sent her a couple of hours ago. First text stated I have pneumonia and partially collapsed left lung. Second text said I would be here a few days until this got resolved.
Her response was "Ok"
Then there's me
I need to be in Alanon since 40 years ago. I am the product of repeated abandonment, sexual, physical, emotional abuse, etc. I have had ED issues since I was a teenager. I have never experienced true sexual or physical intimacy in a way that I could embrace or experience truly. I attended quite a AA meetings with my soon to be wife in the late eighties and found them to be rewarding and very educational. That was as close as I got to meaningful therapy that I do desperately need in my life and of course I needed for most of it.
I went through treatment for Codependency in 1991 while we were married.
Long story short, I came out completely self absorbed and discovered my wife was having an affair three months later and said that was that. My self righteous ass said I would never do that and of course I can't forgive that. I became the abandoner to stop from being abandoned.
I grew up in group homes, foster homes, some hospitals, most of which I can't access any records to and so I got the Heinz 57 value drippings on life's french fries. It's only been the last 25 years or so that I've really started to try and find what my values and truths were/are.
Some I gained in my teens, i.e. 1st Corinthians on love, Herman Hesse on spiritual foundation, The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino in my thirties for how to treat others and so on.
It seems Whatever higher Power there is, I use God Liberally, has really taken form from you.
So all those references to I'm not worthy, deserving, feelings of not belonging anywhere my whole life and trust me, I could go on have been there in full view in every aspect of my life.
I had an emotional breakdown in the middle of a managers meeting where I was third in charge of a 500+ employee and contractor taxicab company, the largest in the state of Minnesota when at the perfect moment my boss asked me what the problem was with one of my departments. My response, which was my greatest fear that I projected onto everyone almost daily.
"You hired the wrong man for the job"
I burst into tears in relief and regret as this terrible "secret" had finally been exposed.
It wasn't true of course, I was hired because I had really great people skills and treated everyone with dignity and respect out of principle, not duty.
The last 5 years have really beaten me down to the point of abject poverty and simultaneously placed me in a situation where I felt like anything and everything I had to give was devalued, minimized and I course offered to people and ho couldn't be gratefully received much less acknowledged.
Tracy was a card carrying I hate all politicians member and is now a proud loud Democrat.
Will she ever say I helped her find herself on that road?
I'm not holding my breath.
Part two coming soon and sorry for how long and discombobulated this became.
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You're so brave to express yourself like that. I could never do that. Me, I keep my 2 ex-wives on the most cordial and supportive terms that I can. I "married above my status" twice and both helped me immensely. Not in the $ sense but both helped mold me into a better person. Best of luck to you moving forward. You're very good at writing. Cheers 
And they will embrace it and keep it close to their hearts because in knowing another, the can feel known when they're ready.
Several of you have taught me that already in all seriousness.
