feeling totally, completely rudderless

[added: I keep changing the title because I can't figure out what that last word should be.]

I know this is ridiculous, but I just feel like I'm flailing here.

I feel like, my whole life, what've I've really needed is somebody to care. To notice. To pay attention to what I'm saying and doing and give some USEFUL fricking feedback.

I feel like nobody can really see who I AM, what I'm good at, what I'm useful for. I mean, the culture, of course, has all kinds of definitions of what a woman 'should' be and what a grown adult human 'should' be able to do and achieve.

But how does one get there, to this magical place of 'adulthood', all grown up, all figured out, all put together?

Nobody ever seems to want to talk about this stuff, and the people who seem to HAVE it together seem to have no idea whatsoever what I'm talking about. If I try to ask them questions or talk about it, it's as if I've sprouted three heads or started speaking Swahili or something.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, like somehow I've been asleep or something all this time, and my body has kept aging, and I've continued to live life and have experiences, but - somehow, I, the essential me, has been disconnected from it all. And now all of a sudden I've got all this catching up to do, and no CLUE whatsoever how to it with very few financial, emotional or other resources.

What am I supposed to DO? People look away, as if you're something shameful, when you try to talk about this stuff. So I try to avoid such people, who are either in denial that anything like that has ever happened to them, or who really never have experienced having no safety net. Or, not the safety net you always assumed was there until you found yourself falling, screaming through space, terrified, and realized that - you were going to shatter. And no one was going to care. No one was going to help you pick up the pieces, or put them back together again. No one was going to care whether you managed to put the pieces together again. You begin to feel like some kind of Frankenstein's monster - all patches and seams and crooked places out of joint, like you've got this gigantic hump on your back that no one can literally see, but everybody reacts to as if you're some kind of - FREAK.

***
It's the same as it ever was - that feeling of not belonging, of having no place to fit in. Of being accepted (and even liked) in certain places, but it's just not enough - little fragments here and there that are never enough to create a whole picture. Like trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing, or trying to sew a queen-size quilt with 3 square feet of fabric.

I keep searching for metaphors, some simple, straightforward explanation, something that fits neatly into a nutshell so that when I'm trying to explain, for the thousandth time, what's going on with me and WHY I need help (you can't ever just say, "Hey, I really need help with this, could you help me?" There's always this, "Why? Why can't you just do it yourself?" and it always seems pretty goddamn self-evident that, hey, if I could have done it all by myself I would have fucking DONE it by now, you fucking maroon.)

***
At this moment I feel less angry than simply perplexed, puzzled, at a loss, frantic to figure out WHAT THE BLOODY FUCKING HELL I'm supposed to DO.

I keep trying things, and nothing ever seems to make a substantial change. I've said this before, but I feel like one of those stupid beetles that keeps falling over on its back, and every time it falls over it lies there, helplessly, with no one to set it upright. It just flails its stupid beetle legs in the air, gaining no traction, making no progress. And if I *do* turn it over? It immediately falls over on its back again. It's like it LIKES lying there on its back, flailing its little legs with no meaning or purpose. Stupid beetle.

***
When your parents use you as a projection screen for their hopes, fears, needs, etc., you never have a chance. You never have a chance to be seen, to be heard, for who you really are. Because all you are is fragments of the bits that they project onto you - you never really get to be yourself.

(Thinking of the Snow Queen here, and the mirror shard that gets into


***
The pieces I need help with are (I'm pretty sure) developmental stage issues as far back as that murky, shadow time when I was a blob of cells lurking around in amniotic fluid, more than a twinkle in somebody's eye, less than a fully-formed, fully embodied being.

Gah. It gets so - esoteric, so weird, so quickly. I mean, I've spent years reading the literature, googling seven million questions from Sunday, and feel like my head is full of all these ideas of how things could be, should be, but simply AREN'T.

And then the three-heads phenomenon: Either they're touchy-feely, woo-woo New-Age bullshit practitioners who have no more clue what I'm on about than the most ill-read, ill-educated average Joe Clueless, or they're people who ought to know better, but somehow, they don't.

Just got a flash of an answer, try to grab its tail: Friend, lots of money, divorced, teenage kid. When she was quite young he was worried how the divorce was affecting her, and was afraid that he wasn't doing a 'good job' as a parent.

Now, I'm glad he asked for help, and that he had the money to BUY the help.

But there's this sneaking suspicion that, in a way, having money let him off the hook of doing his job properly. That these so-called 'experts' are just another scam, and he basically paid somebody to pat him on the head and tell him it's all going to be ok. Kind of like a mutual admiration society or something, or like one of those crystal ball readers who only tells good fortunes. Can't seem to quite capture the thought here...

***
Another attempt at nutshelling: The feeling is like, I've got all these parts, and I'm pretty sure they're supposed to make a bicycle - there's the wheels, and these gears, and a chain, and a seat. And some other bits and pieces that seem pretty bicycle-like.

But somehow there's something missing - the main frame, maybe? So, what the hell IS this thing, and how the hell do I put it together, all by myself with no models, no help, no frame of reference, and no fricking instruction manual? HELLO, can somebody PLEASE HELP ME????

The thing that's REALLY crazy-making is that all my life, people seem to act as if *I'm* in charge, as if *I'm* the one who knows what I'm doing. It's as if, when I ask them for help, I'm letting them down, somehow, because they NEEDED me to be the one in charge. Or something. Gah. I wish somebody would read this and tell me that it makes sense.

***
The word crawstep seems applicable, here - a kind of indirect, sideways shuffle that gets you where you're going, eventually, but you have to look nonchalant, as if there's no purpose or meaning to your movements, and sort of trick people into looking the other way while you're doing it, so that suddenly, while nobody's looking, you're there (wherever *there*, is. Cryptic.)

***
I think what I need is just someplace where I fit, where I'm *not* the oddball, odd woman out, etc. Someplace where I feel needed, wanted, accepted, understood. I don't have that feeling with my nominal 'family', (though I feel like my youngest brother accepted me pretty well til our falling out about a year ago).

Someplace that isn't a job, isn't a place of employment. I know it's supposed to be your 'family', but so often the cost of that so-called 'unconditional acceptance' is a whole lot of silence, an entire elephant shoved under the rug of 'issues we do not discuss'.

***
I think the truth is, everybody's faking it. Everybody's playing that 'man-behind-the-curtain' role, filling their lives with smoke and mirrors and we all accept it because - why? The alternative is too scary?

I've asked other people about this - that feeling that one day, you'll be there, that you'll know, you'll actually FEEL grown-up. But the truth is, most of us? are children hiding our insecurities in ever-aging bodies.

***
I've answered my own question: I don't have enough support.

How do I get enough support? Where is the support system for smart, sensitive, talented people who've somehow washed up onto the beach of later life without many of the things we're 'supposed' to have achieved by now, but somehow haven't?

I have to remember Fundamental Attribution Error. It's so easy to blame oneself for circumstances beyond one's control, especially when nobody else will accpet any responsibility.