My ambition is to be an eccentric old lady. The “old” part is coming along quite nicely, but I can’t seem to move from merely slightly weird. Maybe I’m just not old enough yet. Maybe being eccentric is more of an art form that I’m just not yet fully committed to mastering.
Frequent long distance moves have pretty much cured me of pack rat tendencies except for the family history stuff.
I, too, can see myself in a one-room apartment. Very sparsely furnished but with a good computer and all my genealogy stuff. I’ll live on McDonald’s, cheerios and microwave meals. I’ll stay in except for trips for groceries; and research, and communicate mostly online. My kids will feel sorry for me and will fear that the same fate awaits them but will mostly leave me alone - partly out of fear of that fate.
I won’t be able to afford meds, so my bipolar will lead me to wild fits of starting ambitious projects that will clutter my apartment but never be completed - alternating with bouts of complete dispair, one of which, will eventually lead to my demise and someone having to make sense of what the hell I are all these half-baked projects.
If I can eventually accomplish true eccentricity, I will have left a legacy of colorful stories to be passed down to succeeding generations - a kind of immortality, I guess. What more can one ask?
I always knew I would wind up alone. I only started becoming bitter about it when I realized I’d never be able to sit on my front porch with a shotgun across my lap, yelling “YOU KIDS! GET OFF MY PROPERTY! I KNOW YOUR PARENTS’ NAMES!” because I will never own property.
I’ll die in a residence hotel downtown, and they’ll find my body when I fail to pay the weekly rent.
I had no idea that this was that common. I’m fairly certain that I’ll end up alone as well. I usually don’t see this as bad, as long as I can die prior to senility or other seriously debilitating afflictions. I don’t want to end up in a position where others have to take care of me.
I have a cousin (who I’ve never met) who hasn’t left the house in about 35 years.
Then my uncle married a woman who is such a packrat that, when they go out to dinner, she takes home the styrofoam take-home trays, rinses them out and keeps them.
OKay, so we’ve got about 15 of us who’re going to be Crazy Old Folks[sup]TM[/sup]. What do we do about it? I don’t want to be a COF! But damn it, I can’t see any way out of it. Suggestions from the gallery?
I have one sister, and although I love her dearly, we don’t often talk or spend a lot of time together. I don’t think we’ll have one of those Family Disputes, but I don’t see us spending a lot of time together, either.
I don’t have a lot of friends, just acquaintances and SCA comrades.
The only reason I talk to people is my job.
I must be a real deviant, because I am only able to be attracted to a kind of person so very rare that I haven’t met one in years. So I probably won’t get married. (Oh, my perversion is that I like smart single men.)
People underestimate the value of being a COF-in-training.
People tend to leave you alone (assuming you have the proper scowl on your face at all times), plenty of time to read, plenty of time to go to the range (I am very disappointed that our two TN COF are not armed to the teeth. What sort of Southerners are you?), etc.
Look at the bright side of being a COF! After all, the alternative is to [shudder] socialize.
Wow, a whole thread of future potential shut ins and they are all SDopers.
Just some thoughts before I add my 2 cents.
Skerri
I do not horde guns, because at some times I do not trust myself. I get depressed and I do not want to have such a temptation in a moment of weakness. I find the humor of it since I am a crask shot when I was around handguns. Eve
I can see it, I am positive you can pull it off with the flair and grace few people can.
I just hope your content alone, your a fantastic interesting lady. ShibbOleth Who the hell are you? Angel to save us future recluse?(damn what is the plural?) Reclusi? Patron saint of the lonely? Maybe this was meant to clue us in:
Anyway good call on the Tuckerfan / Hillbillyqueen location match. all I have to say now is Save us Shibboleth your our only hope!! Lsura I am glad to see optimism that you might break out of it by contact with people in grad school. belladonna you said:
I still have not moved the 5 thousand books out of my living room. it is only one more step to building a fort. Fisherqueen I joined up with the local chapter of SCA light fighter practice, just so I would have to force myself to get out of the house at least once a week. I can also relate to loads of things you have mentioned.
Let’s see - would just living alone as a perverted lonley old man be reclusion or just sad and pathetic. I think I may be headed for that outcome - I wonder just when you cross the threshold between “sad and pathetic” and “nutso recluse”
Might it be when I start parking the motorcycle in the living room and using it as a chair?
I’m another one of those. I’ll have to move before I can become Crazy Cat Lady, though, because my condo association only allows one cat or dog per unit.
I do not have a great number of friends. The ones I do have are fantastic. I went with quality over quantity it seems. I find it difficult to get out of the house and run errands unless it is absolutely necessary unless I am starving I do not go to the grocery store, I rarely shop, and not a social butterfly. I was not always this way, but due to poor judgment and bad luck I have become more reserved and less open with people. Mayakovsky nailed it when he wrote “I love” found here http://mayakovsky.com/maya/ilove-en.htm
I have everything I need and most of the things I want. No debts and this lifestyle affords me to horde about 30% of my pay into savings. My life is good, much better than most. yet, somehow lacking. I have no one to share everything inside with.
Not that I have never had the chance. I have been fortunate in life to have met 7 different women with whom it could have worked out. Seven different women whom for some reason I felt more alive, on another level. Taste has taste, color has color. We would think the same thing at the same time and be doubly alive. Yet, each of these friends moved on. Over time we are in touch less and less, How can I compete with geography? Things near require more attention than a distant friend and so, we drift on to being fond memories. I was fond of laughing at this absurdity joking that lady luck was a jealous bitch. My downfall, came when an 8th moved back. Everything was going well (in my eyes) until the fateful day she said “I do not love you anymore” This is what sent me on such a similar spiral as you all. (or I imagine there is a connection) The other day, someone asked what would be the worse way to die. I thought and realized Dying alone, where no one wept or gave a damn would be the worse way to go. If you have not figured it out, I have been thinking of this topic a great deal. I have a friend Kerry, whom is such a person as the previous 7, and is a fantastic friend, I offered to let her move in since she was currently living back at home. She has already stated a long while a go, she did not want to date. Which if fine, I am more addicted to the friendship than the realities of a relationship but bring about. I do well in friendships, I can screw up a relationship in a heartbeat.
Yet, somehow for some reason she has changed her mind, I have not been able to get thru with her on the phone, but her stereo is here, so who knows, maybe she did get the job she interviewed for in Tampa and is to busy to return messages.
I am crawling back into society against my better judgment.
In the end, the mystery is not how we died, it’s the way we live. The courage we have at birth becomes hoarded, shriveled, blown away. Year after year we become more alone. Yet, I know there are people out there I can live with that makes life exciting and vibrant. I have decided not to resign myself to living a life I might regret when it is all said and done. I just have no idea where to start and what to do.
I’m years and years away from possibly being a COF but now this thread has got me worrying if I become one. Eeep, no one should resign themselves to being alone. So all you potential COF dopers, go and find cool people to be with!
That is way easier said than done, Gopher. I’m one who’s burnt a lot of bridges, and spends a lot of time looking back at my mistakes, my lost opportunities, through the light of those flames. Introspection can drive ya crazy when you’re lonely.
I expect to die alone. Mercifully, I do not see myself as being a woman in a house with a million cats (shudder), as I don’t really have enough of an unscarred heart left to share my life with one pet, let along a stereotypical multitude. I hope only that any of the diseases and infirmities which took away my near ancestors visit themselves upon me before I’m completely helpless, or that I die suddenly of something else.
I’ll just be that crazy old Aunt that no one’s really related to by blood, I guess …
Jeez, this thread is depressing! Go back to discussing the latest soft drink flavours, or something!
Here is an example. The numbers are of course rough guesses. Say in the course of time you meet 100 people, by the time you weed out the issue laden psychotics, the self centered flakes, the materialistic grubbers, and the people with to nothing in common. Your down to maybe 3. Of those, two will be married or in a relationship. The last one (in my case, YMMV) The last will end up moving away within a year.
I fluctuate from Desire to rejoin society to a cold dread that to try is just going to produce the same results. Insanity after all, is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Maybe, you have to be a bit insane to be “normal” human to function in society.
I am currently in a rejoin society phase. I do not meet many people outside of work. what to do? Those are some damn ugly odds, and I question my resolve.
Well, I start by going outside of the home and doing things I enjoy doing, this should bring me into contact with people whom I will have more in common with than the typical bar scene. I need to continue to be happy with me alone, No one will want to invest time with someone with a troubled mind and insecurities.
I realize these past posts look to be depressing in nature. Which, is not how I am.
The fact of meeting people I like and get along with is not as easy as I believed once in my younger years. Does not mean I should give up. After all, Nothing worth while comes easy.
I don’t think your posts look depressing - rather, introspective, with a good idea of where your struggle is.
I don’t know about the rest of the people in this thread, but I blocked myself off for years, and as a result, they and I quit trying to get close. I have people (not many) I refer to as friends, but the truth is, few of them really know me, and I don’t know that I really know them. Maybe they believe that I do know them…I don’t know. I’ve allowed myself to drift away from people after all the moves. I don’t know why I do this though.
I do know that I built some pretty serious protective walls though, and though they’ve started to chip the last few years, I can’t settle into my old patterns, or they’ll just get thicker, until I die a lonely old woman (no cats…I’m allergic to cat saliva) in an aparment full of crap. Or not full of crap because I’ve moved every one to two years.
With me, it’s more that every time I start associating with someone, after a few months to a year they simply break off contact: never respond to emails or to messages on their machine. Or they move to a distant city. I haven’t said or done anything which would possibly make these people angry, they just seem to lose interest. Once would be a coincidence, but when it happens again and again I have to assume it’s because of my inherent boringness and lack of charisma.
Lsura Yes, Big protective walls slowly chipping away.
I have a great deal of trusting people. Hell, I will lend out my car, and things, but, free reign of my emotions? HA!
It is to damn painful to give people free reign with my emotions right from the get go. Building such trust is a long process.
I unlike you have Dug in to my geographical location. I did the moving things for quite some time myself. Here at least I can build a history and have some stability to work from. I am not sure how well I would function packing up and moving somewhere where I know few people.
I am glad it comes across as "introspective, with a good idea of where your struggle is. " the great quest is when finally figureing out the problem doing something about it.
(Hey, I’m smart [mostly smart assed, I’ll admit] and single! I’m also a loner! We could be alone together!)
