Which self-destructive patterns learned in childhood are still affecting me now? No one cared about me, so I withdrew. I grew to prefer my own company. I enjoyed lying in the dark shed alone drawing pictures on the ceiling with a flashlight. I had fun playing barbies in our sauna of an attic, composing a pretend world the way I wanted it to be. I loved lining up my stuffed animals on the front porch and “teaching” them; it didn’t matter which subject, but it was usually math. And my idea of playing dress up was drawing “wrinkles” on my face with my mother’s eyebrow pencil, donning sunglasses and a shawl, and pretending to be an old lady hobbling around our front yard. I played solitaire. I colored. I dug in the dirt. I cut up cardboard boxes with our good steak knives, and I danced around the patio with a broom while sweeping. I’d spend an entire day daydreaming whenever it was my turn to clean the bathroom, which was nearly every Saturday since neither of my older sisters ever wanted to get stuck doing it. So, the bathroom never really actually did get clean, but I played in the water and scrubbed the bathtub. I got a sick sense of satisfaction watching the ring of dirty-kid grime peel away from the porcelain beneath the force of my wet rag doused with cleanser. Now, this fierce sense of independent striving prevents me from forming symbiotic relationships. I’ll do whatever I can do myself. Other people just get in the way. It’s not a healthy or productive approach to life, but it’s still habitual. As an introvert, I need to be intentional about making friends and including others at times as well as allowing myself enough alone time to recover. Therefore, I pray for the strength not to allow the fear of being on the receiving end of other people’s hurtful behaviors to control me or for the allure of solitude to draw me into an unhealthy pattern of solitude at the expense of interpersonal relationships.