Picked up a book I haven't read for a long time - 9 years? Multiple Personality Disorder from the Inside Out, a collection of stories and thoughts and feelings from MPD people. Went to meeting, saw M. He was extremely blue, felt like he'd pissed his life away. Of course I disagreed entirely. Then he complained of how people wouldn't notice for days if he walked off a pier. I ended up kissing him (I had been wanting to for awhile) and he felt a little better.
But isn't this just true for many people anyway? I mean, really, I know three single women very well, who have friends that love them dearly but wouldn't miss them for several days if not weeks, if they didn't hear from them. Their job would miss them before their friends would. This is a very common thing, and it doesn't mean they aren't loved or needed. I would certainly be one of those people if I had chosen (1) not to have children or (2) not taken Brad in when he was 13. If I didn't have a house I couldn't afford, I wouldn't have roommates, and would be living alone too.
I also do believe you create your own world according to your gifts and your problems. If I am an addict, and I am active in my disease, and this is my ONLY problem (that never happens but just pretend) then one of the first things I do is to make sure my environment fits my addiction. I isolate from healthy people. I hang out with dysfunctional addictive sorts who either indulge in their addiction with me or who enable me to continue in my addiction without giving me grief. If I have other problems, and I am playing out those issues over and over, then I again mold my environment so it will help me play them out.
So if I start getting healthier, getting out of my addiction, I look around at my unhealthy, chaotic environment and see how awful and rank it is and hate myself. This doesn't work either. Being gentle and loving myself works. Understanding why I had to do it this way works. Being grateful for yet another chance to grow and grow up works. Counting my blessings as I reshape my world works too. I used to pick misogynistic men as partners and lovers. As I've matured, I've picked healthier and healthier men. But it's all a matter of degree. My newer friends are warmer and more nurturing then the ones I used to pick. And healthier!