The Pain Of Neglect

I have been in touch with an old church member.  She was telling me how neglected I was as a child.  She said that she and one of the other woman felt as if they were my second mother.  Apparently, my mother was so busy starting her new church that she did not have time for me. 




I have always known that I spent a lot of time alone. I have always known that I had been isolated from everyone.  I knew that before these people came into my mothers and my life that we spent lots of time in places that I sat by myself and waited for her to finish what she was doing.  It was when I was unattended that an awful lot of negative things did happen.  But, its different when an adult tells you now, and you are now an adult listening to them.  I had never put the word neglect on myself before. I always thought of myself as lonely or feeling extremely alone in this world, but neglect or to say severe neglect brings up this pain in me this evening that I can barely take.  It is not like the pain is new, but it has never come like this before.



It is as if I am filled with a liquid poison and it is killing me on my insides.  For some reason tonight I was hit with such loneliness, the pain of which is unspeakable.  My decision not to have my family in my life is not up for question. I believe it to be a solid choice and I am determined to continue to keep them away from me.  I know that being alone is something we are meant to be able to do and something that we should strive for in our lives.  I know that it is a time for reflection, meditation and to become one with ourselves.  The pain of loneliness in me is different.  It is deep and causes such sadness in my soul.  As if I have never been without it and when this person told me the condition that I was in when she met me, it stifled my existence, bringing such sorrow into my heart.  To have what you know already put into such concrete words by an adult at the time that you were three or so, is almost to much to take.  The pain of so many years made so real in just a day seems almost cruel in nature.  I wonder do people think what will happen to you if they tell you the truth that you are already feeling?  I'm afraid there is no cure for this one, it runs in such a way that I feel unsteady and light-headed from it.



I used to walk back and forth in my room and say, "I am alive, I am a life, I'm not an it." I remember pacing, repeating and pacing some more.  I re-live this in flashbacks.  Does the pain of neglect ever end, or does it just always cause you to scream in silence and live in closets?