If this is your first visit, check out the community guide. You will have to Join us or Sign in before you can post.
Receiving too many notifications? Adjust your notification settings.
Ring, Ring...is Highly Unlikely!

Hi.
Do you ever get the impression that you are the only person who picks up a telephone and actually goes ahead and dials somebody? Do you ever suspect that, if you did not do so, then your own phone wouldn't have no us at all in your life? I have "acquaintances" (I call them that because they've no idea how to be friends) and one or two family members. I swear that, if I didn't phone them, I'd probably never hear from them, again!
The overnight hours are the worst: not counting the high pitched whistle of tinnitus, everything is so deathly silent! All around me, in the town in which I live, folk are either asleep or on their way to it. Out of my "acquaintances", one has known me for 42 years an she has never (not even once) phoned me, to see how I am; one has known me for 30 years (from CB Radio, in fact) and has never phoned me (not even once) to see how I am...and, so the pattern forms, and seems to reform!
When they have a problem, the phone rings, but...after I've helped them with that problem, I know what happens next...those artificial friends busy themselves, wrapping me back up in my personal ghost town of social deadness!
I suppose this is the type of life that forms at the end of 17 years of being caged up in this house with agoraphobia, against which no therapy has ever been effective!
I'm not a newbie, but I'm glad to be back!
Ian.
Do you ever get the impression that you are the only person who picks up a telephone and actually goes ahead and dials somebody? Do you ever suspect that, if you did not do so, then your own phone wouldn't have no us at all in your life? I have "acquaintances" (I call them that because they've no idea how to be friends) and one or two family members. I swear that, if I didn't phone them, I'd probably never hear from them, again!
The overnight hours are the worst: not counting the high pitched whistle of tinnitus, everything is so deathly silent! All around me, in the town in which I live, folk are either asleep or on their way to it. Out of my "acquaintances", one has known me for 42 years an she has never (not even once) phoned me, to see how I am; one has known me for 30 years (from CB Radio, in fact) and has never phoned me (not even once) to see how I am...and, so the pattern forms, and seems to reform!
When they have a problem, the phone rings, but...after I've helped them with that problem, I know what happens next...those artificial friends busy themselves, wrapping me back up in my personal ghost town of social deadness!
I suppose this is the type of life that forms at the end of 17 years of being caged up in this house with agoraphobia, against which no therapy has ever been effective!
I'm not a newbie, but I'm glad to be back!
Ian.
Replies
Welcome back !!!!!!
Yes your situation a big problem country wide !!!!
Please please contact us for "Help & Support"
Don't "Feel" on your own anymore as we are here for you as & when "Required"
Many thanks.
SCOPE Volunteer Award Engaging Communities 2019
Mental Health advice, guidance and information to all members
Nutrition, Diet, Wellbeing, Addiction.
Recipes
Thanks, folks!
Cathie: I know them well enough to suspect that they'd refuse, call me, and they'd reverse the charges - it would become the battle of the techie stuff!
Steve51: Thanks for that, Steve. I don't know what your preference is in contact terms for the "Help and Support". Posting? E Mailing? Phone?
TheSpiceMan: Yep...you know what this is like! Getting the point across sometimes seems like pleading, begging or criticising, to those who do this sort of thing with us. If I confronted them, I'd feel like I was some emotional charity case, but I frequently get angry enough to do so. Sometimes, on the phone, I'll say to one of them, "I heard you had a GP appointment and just wondered how it went and what you were given...friends do that - ya know?" It's never made the slightest difference, so I've tended to avoid it in more recent months. We just cannot get across, to these people, that they are not behaving as friends do. The odd thing, also, is that, in common telephone chats, they often show that they refer to me, to other people, as being a friend. They need to take time out and revise what "friend" really means. Sometimes, I'm just too hardcore proud to tell them how they are failing one of the codes of sincere friendship. Silly situation, really.
Ian.
SCOPE Volunteer Award Engaging Communities 2019
Mental Health advice, guidance and information to all members
Nutrition, Diet, Wellbeing, Addiction.
Recipes