Are you socially invisible? I am.
I live in a rural area that votes Repub. Gun nuts. All the Democrats are African-American. We are white of WASP stock. Some people have large crosses in their yards with white Xmas lights on them lit up at night.
The 2 biggest churches locally are Baptist (SBC) and Methodist (UMC).
There are assorted smaller denominationally-affiliated churches and small independent ones. They might have snake-handlers for all I know!!
Hubby and I met at a UU church in the city. We refuse to set foot in a church except for a garage sale.
People invite us to their church and we say no. They look blank and baffled. We say we are Unitarians and they have no idea what that is.
If they have the slightest idea they confuse us with the New Age types at Unity.
The only wealth here is in the churches. They would not understand what a UU is even if we explained it. So we are socially invisible.
We are retired here because I inherited the family home. We have no one to talk to about what interests us (math, physics, classical music, current events, art, the zeitgeist) which is a related problem. They are all worried about what god thinks. ALL THE TIME.
I am an atheist and study Mahayana Buddhism. Hubby is also an atheist.
I know another couple in town who are ex-Mormon(met them on the Net) but they don't have money or energy to get together with us.
We gave up on the book club in a larger town b/c they talked about god a lot and how special xianity is. That's what church is for.
We are socially invisible. People don't know anything about us so they make shit up about us. We have a nice very old house with a fence around it to keep the con artists and panhandlers away. And Tibetan prayer flags
((((sigh......))))))))
= new reply since forum marked as read
and while your experience may be common, I think it's more a rural vs. metropolitan effect. In Atlanta the racism is not so overt anyway. There are lots of UU churches, also atheist groups. But also enough people to associate with based on interests. I have tennis, book club, bridge, etc.. I'm the only atheist in most of these groups, but it's OK. The internet really is the solution there. And to the poster who complained about invisibility over 50, I hear that, too. That one, though, is a function of a evolution, nothing personal. And I agree that there's an upside to it. It can be a real relief getting out of the hormone maelstrom. All in all, sounds like we're all glad for the interwebs. 
Not that I'm in any position to criticize Georgia while living in West Virginia. You know, glass houses and all.
In a small town close to the right angle Texas makes with New Mexico. The town I live is super conservative but still democrat out of tradition. My town is primarily hispanic and Catholic though there are plenty of baptists and pentacostals out here. No UU church here at all.
We are about 1/2 an hour away from Odessa Texas which once hosted the doomsday cult the House of Yahweh and its sister city of Midland who has a couple of megachurches one of which I think is used by Kenneth Copeland (whose ministry had the measles outbreak). It seems like there is a small church everywhere you look out here.
To say its a religious area...would be an understatement.
I don't get out much as I spend most of my time helping my stepfather take care of my mother who has MS and is unable to take care of herself. I go to college as he stays with her, and I stay with him as he goes and works on crappy money hole oil leases.
I originally was going the medical route with my schooling but that did not work out too well so I switched to math/engineering. So when I do finish my schooling I am going to have a Bachelors in Biology, mathematics and mechanical engineer and a minor in Chemistry. I would have gone bio-engineering had they offered it but I think only 2 schools in the country offer that and none of them are near where I live.
Because of the situation with my mother I don't get out much, but most of my social isolation is self inflicted. I have never been diagnosed but I am all but certain I have Social Anxiety Syndrome and possibly avoidant personality disorder. I just can't handle people and start shaking/quivering when I am put into social situations. If I deal with more than one person at a time I pretty much shut down and withdraw.
So im not so much invisible as I am a hermit.
I love drawing and animation but have no talent what so ever.
Yeah it does feel like purgatory. Kind of like being in a freezer but it's not cold.
The couple who won't come over, the man works and the woman seems to be tired all the time. Maybe it's depression or a health problem. I have had a dead thyroid myself since age eleven, so I know about not wanting to do anything but sleep. Their kids are grown, as are ours. I have seen the woman at the dollar store buying wine and cigarettes. That probably wouldn't help her energy level.
I have met a couple of people that were different at the comm. college where I take welding. One was the art teacher. I gave them my phone numbers and they never called me this summer.
I invited a lawyer and his wife over once for dinner. I met him when he got a ticket dismissed for me, in the next county. They never reciprocated. He's extremely bright and a Democrat and even went to the GOOD law school--the one that cranks out excellent trial lawyers, the one I went to, in Houston!!
I did not serve any dessert or rolls. Maybe that was it.
I didn't have any help, since you can't hire anyone to do anything in this town, be it yard work, house work, or repairs. Appointment books and commitments are impossible to use here, although they might say they are desperate and on Medicaid but need beer and cigarette money.
Several business people have gotten mad at my husband, argued with him, and they couldn't make an appointment and stick to it and blamed us for the sin of going out of town!!! Businesses are badly run here due to incompetence and stupidity. I've posted these on Angie's List.
Or maybe the lawyer and his wife saw my mahogany buffet I use for an altar with pictures of the ancestors and Oriental statues on it, and decided I wasn't Christian enough, although they never said anything. People here are all so much alike they are depressingly predictable.
The man was very impressed with hubby's pic of his grandfather getting his second star pinned on him in 1942 by General Eisenhower. Hubby's grandpa was a three-star general & after the war the first Comptroller of the Army.
I lost two of my longest term women friends over money. I had known each of them for FORTY YEARS. They borrowed money and didn't pay it back, so I had to break off contact with them. It depleted our retirement funds and both hubby and I got severely depressed from giving them money.
On the topic of African Americans, the second woman I've known for over forty years, I had to stop seeing her because she was always asking for money. Her situation was a bit more complicated. She is in her eighties and cannot work. She is a nice person and only gets $600 a month in Social Security. She was my grandmother's maid. She lives here.
Her son died a couple years ago and hubby put up $3,000 to cover part of the funeral so she wouldn't worry.
However, she has a bunch of kids and grandkids who are deadbeats and don't contribute to her upkeep. They should be kicking in money every month for her. I counted three blood grandchildren and five adopted children she raised, and not one of them has given hubby a cryin' dime to pay him back, let alone the other $1,500 that the funeral director said she needed.
She was always asking for money for house repairs for an incompetent nephew who has absolutely no business repairing anything, and that would include putting batteries in a flashlight.
The last straw was when the idiot nephew said she needed a new breaker box. We went over there to her house and hubby (former electrical engineering major) determined she had plenty of capacity in her breaker box and this guy was just ripping her off. He also didn't know that you can cut from one corner to the other corner of a diagonal on a square tile, and get a 45 degree angle that way.
I didn't know there were people that stupid out there that "repaired" houses until I saw that not-on-the-diagonal cuts for a whole room.
I used to go to the dollar store and get her paper towels and TP and detergent once a month, b/c you can't buy paper products with food stamps. I once bought her $150.00 worth of new towels and the daughter with the three babies STOLE them all and they disappeared when she was living in the PJs(the projects-public housing).
The worst part is that one of the grandsons told us he gets $3,500 a month in disability money from the V.A., and he should be paying us back and also the funeral director, and all he's done is tell his grandma that she's a crazy old bitch. I wish I could help the grandbabies in school but their mama (one of D's adopted kids) just keeps having babies (one dead, three living, and she's 28) and listening to rap music and haven't learned anything in school. She got thrown out of public housing for having a boyfriend there, so that's why she lives with my friend. My friend went to Dillard University in New Orleans for a while so she has a couple years of good education & we can talk about stuff.
The blacks here are anti-intellectual and into rap about bitches and hos, and the whites are anti-intellectual and into crushing their childrens' spirits into total obedience, being afraid of the EEEVILLL outside world, and praying instead of reading books & lecture the kids constantly about Jeebus Jeebus Jeebus.
I'd be happy to give kids piano lessons, or let them come over and watch COSMOS, but no, their parents aren't interested in encouraging them.
Needless to say, having to stop talking to my friend D because of her deadbeat kids, completely broke my heart.
That's a very interesting concept.
I wonder if we're changing the vibe around here by our presence, even without interacting with people. And while "waiting for more weirdos to move here" LOVE that phrase!!
I am already wondering if I can give up my attachment to wanting friends, since I study Buddhism. Buddhism is all about giving up attachments and realizing everything is illusory and transitory.
So far that hasn't helped. If I don't interact with any intelligent life in person I get depressed.
We have been here almost five years. Moved here in 2008 after going thru Hurricane Ike which was traumatic, in Houston. Took us six years before that to clean out the house before we moved after mom died, b/c mom was a hoarder. Couldn't touch a goddamned thing before she died. I have no idea how much stuff I threw away/gave away/took to an auction house, and still have 150 banker boxes I have not gotten thru.
I have given up on getting my friends from Houston and Dallas to come see us on weekends, although we have a spare bedroom and my house doesn't stink. I can't stay with any of them b/c they have cats and dogs and smelly houses. My friends must be slobs.
I have cats but they are outdoors most of the time and are not allowed to pee and poop in the house. I'm very allergic to most cats and dogs. And I thought I was a lousy housekeeper. At least I and the food and clothes are clean.
People here know who my parents and grandparents were when I talk about them. Big F'in deal. My dad started the sr.citizens center and now it's withering away b/c nobody is smart enough to manage it competently since he died in 2000; I'm not getting involved.
migrate to a friendlier social clime.
Seattle is nice, this century.
but its more because I'm a single middle-aged female. I'm contemplating looking for work as a hired assassin . . . who would notice? (or maybe a secret agent, like Agent 88!)
I had to chuckle at your "New Age types at Unity" comment - my grandmother belonged to Unity; joined when she was in her early 30s, about 1929 or so. It was a well established organization at the time.
I understand what you're saying (I always thought of it as "granny's woo"
; I just thought the phrasing was interesting.