Welcome to my AvPD blog – a dark corner of the internet where I write honestly about Avoidant Personality Disorder, social terror, and the quiet comedy of spending most of my life trying not to be perceived. If you’ve ever rehearsed basic sentences, hovered over the “send” button like it’s a detonator, or avoided a phone call from someone you actually like, then you’ll understand the atmosphere here. No judgement. Just gentle horror.
Most people, even the lonely ones, still seem to have someone. I don’t. And yes, I’m aware you can feel desolate even in a crowd. I’ve read the same naff quotes on Instagram as you.
I write about my life with AvPD with a mixture of honesty and irritation. Expect reflections on solitude, awkward encounters, angry outbursts, online friendships that feel safer than real-life conversations, and the daily challenge of simply existing.
This AvPD blog is part diary, part SOS. A message in a bottle from someone who spends most of her life indoors, doing a bit of keep fit, reading books, feeding foxes, doting on two rescue cats, and quietly wondering if she’ll end up as one of those headlines: Skeleton of Woman Found in Suburban House. Cats Appear Well Fed.
This isn’t a self-help site or a place for inspirational breakthroughs. Basically, it’s just something for me to do – I can only read so many books and stare at so many walls!
I’m not your usual blogger. I left school at 15, so I’m completely uneducated. I’m a vegan, born in 1965, a mid-lifer heading towards a lonely old-age – though a young one at heart, in looks, flexibility, and the things I still find exciting. Not that I actually do any of them, like riding rollercoasters or summoning the dead (anything really where I’m not expected to talk to people, apart from the deceased who communicate in a style I can manage).
I’ve been “diagnosed” with a mixed moderate personality disorder – anxious-avoidant, with borderline and histrionic traits thrown in for flavour. This was based on a one hour phone call with a psychiatrist who actually asked, “Are you histrionic?” and I, being helpful, said yes. Hence the official note about being histrionic.
I believe that I’m the loneliest woman in the UK (it has its bonuses; no drama being the main one) – because I just cannot form relationships with anyone.
But it’s not all bad (although plenty of it is) and I get through with a couple of online relationships, my reading, a bit of exercise, looking after nature, and generally accepting this is just the way I am. I might suddenly spring into action now and then by attempting real life, but so far, I’ve always fallen flat on my face.
I’m wondering if anyone else can resonate with the things I say and how I act, as I believe that I’m unfortunately, pretty unique.
See you in cyberspace.
