Turn Over new Leaf

I've been repeating the same mistakes over and over. People use me because I trust they are telling the truth. I got another cat dumped on me, by responding to the City of Albany's request to check out a stinky dumpy duplex. I also stupidly believed the people there, who claimed a SafeHaven board member promised to take the cat in, until SafeHaven could. He says that didn't happen. I don't know who to believe anymore. Probably, I should believe no one.

I can't adopt out a kitten for the life of me.
Other cat groups and people will take from me, but they don't give back. I need to turn over a new leaf. My overly helpfulness to my own destruction is due to loneliness.

Nonetheless, lonely or not, I need to cease or I will continue to be the dumped upon. I'm sure some of these folks joke about how they'll bribe me to do some job for them by even just calling once, because they know I am so lonely. For some reason, I keep thinking things will be different the next time, but by now, even a nominally intelligent person would have gotten the picture.

I need to kick in some survival instincts, some kick back instincts. Maybe I should join a boxing club or something.

I got beat down for 45 years of my life. That is difficult to overcome. Can I, at this late stage overcome? Can I develop some self-esteem? I avoid the whole problem of facing up to my low self-image for the most part because I am an isolated person and rarely interact with real humans. I rarely see or talk to anyone, outside of brief encounters picking up cats or trapping them, or at the vets office, picking up and dropping off.

Sure, I like men, but I have avoided the dating scene due to low self-esteem because one cannot engage in a normal relationship with low self-esteem. Only leas to more problems. I've had a few boyfriends, relationships were brief. Well, I've actually never encountered a normal man, one without drug or alcohol addictions or nutcases, so I guess I can't say I ever really dated. I went into the mental health system so young, and before that and on, I couldn't even kiss a guy without seeing my father's face, hairy eyebrows, big fat lips, coming at me, even smelling him. Yuk!

Those sorts of things gone through as a child pretty much destroy the ability in a young woman to ever have normal relationships with the opposite sex. I at least knew this, so avoided the further problems this would add. But, without a relationship, no family and without a family--the loneliness is eternal for me.

But, lonely or not, I don't have to take being used. This is something I can change. I can't change what happened to me as a child and then in the mental health system, but I"ve been out now for seven years. I can change some things.