It is partly my fault.  I do have to acknowledge my own responsibility for the history that led to this, but it isn’t all my fault.  You see, I have no current real life friends, other than my husband.  Nobody outside of family ever invites me over for dinner, or to go camping.  Nobody ever invites any of my children over for a sleepover.  The birthday party invites for my children are few and far between.  If a bunch of soccer parents are taking their kids skiing?  I won’t be invited.  We don’t go out to restaurants with people, because we’re not invited.  We’ve stopped being invited to Fourth of July BBQs, New Years Eve parties, Super Bowl watching parties, baptisms, weddings, and funerals.  Nobody ever invites me out to coffee.  Nobody ever asks me to come over and help them move, pack, clean up, watch their children while they do something important.  Nobody ever asks me to go to a movie with them.

I have acquaintances, sure.  I have digital friends who used to do the above things.  When they post pictures of the great time they had with their friends doing any of the above, I feel excluded.  It’s just like high school and college all over again, being the last one picked for dodgeball, being the only one in church youth group not invited to the party, being the one not picked for the lighting crew, not picked to sing, having stories told about me behind my back.  I’m sad and hurt.  But not too sad, and not too hurt.

Desperation doesn’t work.  It never did.  The people who practice magic would call it “the lust for result.”  The people who don’t practice magic call it something different.  They blame the victim.  I mean, obviously, I need to do the inviting first, or something.  If you’ve even seen social shunning in action in high school, you know that doesn’t work, and the outcast quickly learns that every invitation leads to a quick “no”.  I already admitted that I am partly responsible.  I have no voice.  I have no friends.  I have no visible presence.

I have ancestors I talk to and listen to.  Oh, don’t look so shocked, a belief in ancestor worship is very common across the globe.  It is only in the western U.S. where it is not practiced much.  You don’t have to believe in the existence of ancestor life after death in order to understand that having conversations with them works.  If the vast majority of people have an imaginary friend called God or Allah whom they talk to and that actually works for them, why would you poo-poo my talking to my ancestors, even if you believe they are imaginary?  Besides, they’re more responsive than high and lofty Gods who have high and lofty plans that involve what He did to Job’s children, what He did to Daniel, and what He did to the daughter of Jephthah.  Ghosts can hug when nobody else ever does.  Ghosts can teach social skills, when the rest of the world is intent on hiding the unwritten rules from me.  It was the ghosts which first taught me to look and listen and feel, to see beyond the surface, and it was the ghosts which taught me to block out others’ pain.  Or are they spirits?  Are they alien spirits?

Does not matter.  Need not be.  It doesn’t matter if they are real or all in my head, like governments and titles of lordship.  It doesn’t matter if I never have any real life dependable friends ever again.  Do you know why?  I’ll tell you why.  Without the bonds of mutual obligation, I am free.  I am free from their judgment of me.  If they think I am arrogant or socially awkward, they can do so, because they are petty and shallow and can’t hear the Earth cry out in pain over the roads and deforestation and monocultured grass.  I have no need to conform to their standards.  I have no need to chase popularity, or that kind of social power.  I can be a bad mom.  That’s right, I can be considered by anybody else to be a bad person, and it doesn’t matter.  My worth is not determined by them.  They lost that right, and they lost that trust when they neglected to show love or even basic decency and respect.