Well, here I am new to the Loners tribe, but I've lurked from time to time--like a proper Loner, I guess! You know us Loners--quiet and keep to ourselves.

You ask about family. I have no family anymore, well, not blood relatives, I mean. My mother was a loner who acquired and suffered from many of the assorted problems associated with PASS (Prolonged Adaptation Stress Syndrome) because she grew up before the dawning of this pro-choice-on-everything age. An asocial being forced into a social box. She did the get married and have kids thing twice because that was just what one did, and when she worked outside the home she did bookkeeping in a bank, for god's sake, dealing with an office setting with other people around all the time--gahh! ! ! And *she* was meant NOT to, if anyone in the world was! She never missed an opportunity to convey to me how much she hated people (and, incidentally, let slip a few times carelessly just how little she thought of the having of babies and all that family/social stuff, too. Imagine growing up knowing you were born just because your mother didn't manage to find any way to buck the trend and avoid adding you to the population and having to parent you?)

My mother's first husband died when my half brother and half sister were little tiny kids, and my mother went into the work force and boarded the kids with someone who basically raised them. When she remarried, those two kids were both adults and out on their own. So my mother never really got much experience raising kids, but apparently didn't yet know herself well enough to let that first experiment be the last of it, and when she was 43 she went and had me. So she got to stay home every day, away from adult people, but of course she couldn't be alone because she had a brat running around. It made life with her tension-ridden like you read about, but I understand her better, I think, than she understood herself, because I'm just like her. With the exception that I knew enough not to have kids. Gah! ! ! I can't stand being around kids!

My father was scary and alcoholic, with anger management problems like you read about, and he died when I was seven. I sure didn't miss him. He believed in beating a kid senseless with a belt, for one thing, and for another, he was the baseball and football-tossing kind of father, whose way of playing with a kid resembled boot camp. Every minute of our "play" was just me being yelled at to improve my performance at something I wasn't interested in to begin with. Because I *was* interested in riding a bike, I went off by myself and taught myself to ride my own way, because his way involved forcing me to get on and ride a few inches with him yelling at me and then fall in front of him, and then repeat the humiliation over and over, and be ridiculed if I wouldn't do that anymore. If he'd got the bright idea to teach me to swim, you just know it would have been the "throw 'em in and make 'em sink or swim" method. You DO NOT treat a sensitive Introvert that way. Do! Not!

When I moved to New England I stayed in touch with my mother by post till she died, and that was great--via the written medium, we could finally relate. But I let the half brother and half sister and their kids go--I never felt like I was related to them anyway, they were just people we knew. I was an enigma to them, I could always tell. I haven't been in contact with them in decades and I don't miss them. I doubt if they miss me. And I'm almost 55, so they're getting way up there. I know roughly where they are, or were recently, because I've Zaba-searched them. Just out of curiosity. Have no need to get in contact.

And you know, I recall now that my mother had a brother who moved to New Jersey after their mother died, and my mother totally lost contact with him. He never again wrote, called, or visited. No animosity, it was just like with my siblings and me--just GONE. So I guess I come by my loner-nature honestly!

My mother always said if she had the money she'd go live somewhere so remote and set up her life so that she'd never have to deal with another human being. I can sure relate. But surprise, surprise--my mother absolutely loved animals and so do I. I see this a lot with Introverts.

I recognize now that she was an *extreme* Introvert, as am I. You know our entire brain chemistry is different from the 75-80% of the world that is Extraverted? Our solitary ways are not symptoms of mental illness--they are necessary for the preservation of our mental *health!* I thought I had a disorder until I learned to use the internet and stumbled on this information, and started digging for more. You know, I've always written letters and the internet has been a dream come true. Because I'm a *born* communicator, and sharer of experience and ideas. I just need the processing-buffer of SOLITUDE. Arms-length correspondence is what suffices for "social" with me. It's about all the "social" I need. And that's been "weird" to most people, most of my blood relatives included. Because this is a slap-on-the-back, think-on-your-feet kind of be-jolly culture--these are the traits that are valued. Reflection, analysis, sensitivity--those are considered nerdy or wuss-ways. I call ours a post-literate culture. Christ! what a way to "encourage" loners to "join in"--confront us with a cacophonous dystopia composed of all the elements that reinforce our worst nightmares!

I get alone very well with my family, especially my parents. Although this wasn't always the case. When I'm not alone, I do enjoy spending time with my parents.

Re Lones post. i feel I'm a berden to my mom and dad, and can't wait till I can go over seas to University for 3 years... Then hopefully move to that country...