You have to be kidding me.

Talk about self absorbed!  She's offering a free book to people who guess what she had and has not read. Sweet Mudah 'ah Gawd.

Unsewn fabric

I am not a joiner.  My dad and the two outhouse Johns have pretty much ruined that option...Family beaten to death, the Church of Christ burnt to the ground by the flames of a philandering preacher, and the temple of Mental Health toppled by the Narcissism of a self serving egoist.  I know, these guys are not to blame.  Just ask them. They did nothing wrong. They just followed their own agenda and had no obligation to do anything for anyone else: To thine own endless, senseless passions be true.  Children and the needy are disposable , shoveled into the blast-furnace of personal need.  Their private lives are what matter... just ask them.

So I was wrong for needing them, trusting them, joining them.  My fault. They offered something I was buying...a simple exchange of goods for services. They did nothing egregious or duplicitous, they sold, I bought. No guarantees either stated nor implied.   It is my fault for choosing faulty mentors. For needing. For trusting. For forgetting, or never knowing, that other people, at least to these guys, are just that, other people. I was one of those others. I expected different. My bad for not seeing what I was before learning what I am. An other.  I accept responsibility for my actions.  I will be the only one in the foursome taking responsibility, that is for absolute certain.

So now, in typical ab-reactive fashion,  I don't join.  "I'm not a joiner" I say to whomever is unfortunate enough to hear. To those who have joined, who never knew there was an option to disengage, who are stitched together with the sinew of loving community and healthy mentors, I come across as a lonely, deluded outsider.  Pitiable.

But all is not lost.  I am not alone. I have the rest of the "others." But I find I don't fit there either. To those who are completely disenfranchised,  my concerns about disconnectedness are ludicrous, over simplifying the obvious. The poor souls who are both wholly alone and have always known it, dismiss the idea of connectedness as fantasy: Unicorn fantasy.  Illusion.

So I stand in the emptiness between both camps. I know it.  I wish it were not so.  I wish my life was more stitched together; that I could thread the needle with the thread of trust, pull the torn fabric of my life together, and knit myself into the soft, warm fabric of the communities around me.  But, "I'm not a joiner." Like Estragon, even though I feel myself ready to join, wanting to join, preparing to join, when I am ready to resign myself to the group I remind myself, "I am not a joiner." In a moment the threads falls out of the needle, the fabric falls away from the rest of the garment,  and I remain limp, still unjoined.

Bummer