Not even sure where I'm going with this but need to get it out...
For the past couple of weeks I've been waking everyday having memories of the same incident (was years ago). Involved some people I'd known a year or so and spent quite a lot of time with and thought we were friends. They decided because of my mental health issues they would cut me out, it was very bare-faced and brutal. It's making my heart race just typing this. I won't go into details, but an important point is that on the day I tried to calm my "irrational" thoughts that I was being excluded but it turned out to be true. I was also lied to by closest in the group; I knew it was lies but it was that sort of thing where you can't exactly pin down an obvious lie, but it just doesn't add up, iyswim. This person has (years later) apologised, and admitted the lies, and others from the group have been friendly/pleasant - overall I get the impression I was badly misjudged and they realise that.
This leads to related thing 1. One of the people, who I didn't know so well, used to be a right cow. She seems lovely nowadays, so I'm not having a go at her exactly, but I feel so hurt that she was shown acceptance whilst I was excluded. She used to get horribly drunk and abusive, and act in an inappropriately sexual (forceful!) way to uninterested men. She just sort of got batted away like a fly, and sorted herself out over time. Now I'm all for showing compassion and trying to understand people - great. But it's not universally applied. It's like some people - and I knew a man who was the same as her - get the benefit of the doubt all the time, whilst others (like me) get, if anything, the opposite. I mean, I'd find it much easier to be sympathetic to someone struggling with mental health and seeking support than someone who deals with it by drinking/taking drugs and being horrible to others - but that isn't what I've observed from others. I also feel weird about the fact that she got herself together in a relatively short time frame, whereas I'm still struggling... a bit like "it can't have been that bad for her if she's fine now" type thing. I feel a total bitch for thinking this, btw, and wouldn't say it out loud or act on it. But then I think, perhaps the fact that she was accepted and had good friends is what helped so much? And then it seems even sadder that I don't belong anywhere.
I am a bit "weird" (but in a way it seems many MNers are too!) I've never been one of the popular crowd, as it were, but always found "alternative" type people I get on with (I sound like I'm talking about the school playground; I've no idea how else to phrase it!) Just my interests, priorities, and life outlook I guess - I'd be most at home round a campfire having a good chinwag/pondering than in a club, for example. I'm quite lonely day-today now, and really miss just discussing things with others who share a vaguely similar worldview. I spent a lot of time backpacking in my early 20s (I still avoid shorter holidays in favour of a longer jaunt every few years - kind of making the most of it ready to stop if I get a chance to have children!) and frankly this saved me, making me think about a lot of things and meeting so many others who were like me and thought about the same things... but it also exacerbated another issue, which is feeling out of place and older than my peers back home. Weirdly this has finally stopped and even gone the other way in some cases - I feel ancient inside, in a way, but on the outside they have professional jobs, and/or partners and some have children, whereas I don't so seem young in those areas of life. I'm early 30s now, concerned partner/children will never happen (but not missing a relationship, in itself), and haven't had a job for years due to poor mental health (whilst on the subject, will mention I've never really made friends at work due to aforementioned weirdness).
In terms of mental health, my problems are very much due to experiences, and I've had a hell of a job trying to get help. Have had some private therapy which helped, and working on things, becoming stronger person - used to be ripe for abuse by men. But I'm sure if I'd had supportive friends I could trust things would be so much easier now. I do my thing, try to be happy, do a couple of classes so I see people regularly, but inside I feel crushed at all the rejection I've faced in my life. A lot is partly due to circumstance - I don't live near old school friends as everyone dispersed for uni, I didn't go to uni myself so didn't make friendships there, I have lived in different places in UK but seem to have been out of sync with others - eg. making friends in between travelling, but as I started to settle down a bit they started travelling and often didn't return. So didn't have the deep roots of friendship that hold firm in troubled times - ie. poor mental health. I feel devastated that I've been judged (and my god people make up horrendous rumours - proper chinese whispers stuff!) as not trying to help myself/thick/nasty when I have always had a problem-solving outlook and have gone out of my way to support others where I can. And there's another problem - I'm more happy/confident in myself, take less bullshit kind of thing, but obviosuly this makes me less "nice" and more able to cut out wankers. But if empathetic doormat me wasn't wanted, why would a more assertive version be accepted by others?
Gosh, this is really long. I had other things to mention - mainly (1) old friend (from school) who became more scathing of me over the years and stopped speaking to me when I spoke up for myself, and (2) friend who I could confide in who unfortuantely was male and got a partner who cut out several female friends of his - she has even, it turns out, spread unpleasant rumours about me, which obviously it's much easier for people to go along with she is protected by virtue of her boyfriend being good friends with them... what I find astounding though, is that another woman who was also pushed out was re-accepted and turned against me.
I'm scared. I'm scared I'm missing something and all the pieceing together of everything over the past few years is somehow "wrong" and I'm actually a terrible person.... because if people have a long run of issue with others, it's the person, right?
Oh one more thing to add to the confusion - I recently had cause to meet some of my younger sibling's friends. Sibling lives some way away, but we get on like a house on fire. Although we are quite different on the surface, we share a way of thinking about the world, the way we reason things through or thoughts that occur. Anyway, sibling is massively popular with everyone (toddlers to grannies), and sibling's friends are amazing. Early/mid 20s but really nice, thoughtful mature people - especially noticeable in the men (in comparison to my peers at that age!) Many have been friends since school. Anyway, it's like my sibling lives in a different world! Where our shared worldview/thoughts/morals make perfect sense, but I'm somehow trapped in a parallel universe...
Thoughts welcome, tips, advice, ideas...
I feel really selfish having typed all that out 
but this is eating me up at the moment and I could really do with an outside perspective, thank you
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Relationships
Lifelong friendship issues - I'm a (nice!) weirdo
StHeathensGrammar · 30/05/2017 09:29
Bless you op. Im sure you are a fun person with plenty of chatacter. I used to be the odd one out at school and in social groups, and ive moved around a lot too. I used to feel like a freak! However, as ive got older (im 36 now), ive learnt that my individuality and quirkiness is a definite plus point, people seem to find it fascinating! I never get bored and its also made me extremely independent. Im sure you will feel like this in time too. Have a bit more faith in yourself as you get older your self confidence will grow. 
Thanks for the replies.
mum I think the word is ruminating? It's not exactly like that for me though - it's more that I'll have nightmares and these memories that come without me consciously tinking about it, iyswim. What bothers me is how to move forward - I feel I need to learn from it, in the same way I've learnt from having wanker ex's. Plus a lot of these experiences have happened even as I've been trying to put previous experiences behind me - eg. in my first example when I told myself I was being irrational and paranoid but WAS actually being excluded. This is something I find really hard - people say stuff/give advice that isn't really how the world seems to work, I've been encouraged to ignore my instincts as "oversensitive" or whatever but they turn out to be spot on!
I do try to be positive and wouldn't still be here if I didn't... but it's so hard when I've always tried to make things better, absorbed advice, thought about things... yet it doesn't work out for me, and it hinges on friendships. For example, since I was a teen I have thought people are much more important than money/possessions, yet I am lonely and those who chase money have friends! Also I think it's important not to drop friends when getting into a relationship, but those around me do just that... yet it works for them! I seem to be the sort of person people have a laugh with then forget quickly... I'm never on the "A-list" of friends, as it were.
FatOldBag (Typing your username feels like I'm insulting you! ) I know what you mean - I'm happier and weirdly more confident in myself since not giving so much of a shit what others think. But at the end of the day, I'm desperately lonely. I would just like to have a conversation, or know someone's got my back, or just not be so... isolated. If I died it would be one of those body-found-months-later type scenarios. I feel like I've been parachuted in from another time when people were living in tight-knit villages...
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