Thank you for reading this letter.

I am 60 years old and I want a purpose. Being a mother has been my one real purpose. My adult children are secure and joyful and don't care for maternal meddling. I worked for pay for 12 years. It was a job not a career. I have been on disability for two years for problems related to being ADHD and bipolar -- mostly depression, although ADHD greatly impairs both my long- and short-term memories. I have found both homeopathy and Western medicine to be helpful.

I know most important for everyone -- and especially us aging boomers -- is social contact. My first obstacle is that I am an introvert. I scored 89 percent on the Meyers-Briggs. My apartment is in a building designated for recipients of Social Security and disability benefits. It is a nice, well-maintained building. My immediate neighbors are lovely. I rarely leave my apartment except to do laundry or grocery shop.

Continue Reading...

I'm a 31-year-old man with a very childish mind regarding the world and women.

I've been into a relationship with a nice girl for six months now, and while I'm attracted to her by her personality and physical attributes, it bugs me that I'm not falling in love with her.

We work at the same place and get along very well. I enjoy chatting and talking to her, going out to public places, and having more private encounters.

I must confess this is my first relationship. I'm extremely shy and it took great courage to start talking to her. Since then we've been getting along well, but we've also been separated twice -- mainly because I started freaking out.

She seems very much into this, and I'd like to correspond but I don't know why I can't. Right now, I feel like a liar, but when we were separated I felt miserable and empty.

I owe her a lot, but I'm saddened because she's not after anything else than my affection and I seem to be unable to really fall for her. I just want her to be successful and happy, and safe from any harm.

Continue Reading...

I need ... not so much advice, more like a finger point.

I have social anxiety disorder. Never diagnosed, but when there are days when I step out of the house and have to go back inside  because I am convinced the world has dismissed you, what else can it be? That's a little rhetorical, as I am not a therapist, but having a label really, really helps.

Before six years ago, “the world does not care about you because you are not worth caring about” was the law dictating my life. This stemmed from something of a hostile home environment. Of three daughters, I am chronologically dead center between two incredibly gregarious, extroverted people (my older sister, to this day, can go to random states for work and can score a couch to crash on). I was debilitatingly shy, and I don't know if my mom favored my sisters' extroversion but it did mean I got overlooked a lot, and when I subsequently wilted from that she regarded my perceived weakness with scorn (and when I naturally did poorly in school, she taught me love was conditional). My dad worked too much, which was too bad because I still get along with him best of all.

Continue Reading...