I find myself at somewhat of a cross roads in my life, and this has given me more time to gaze inwards and make some observations about myself and the way I see the world. Having done that I now feel a great urge to confess to someone. I have chosen you as my confessor, not least because the internet provides a cloak of anonymity that I find incredibly comforting.
Before I begin I will tell you a little bit about myself; I am an adult male from an educated and fairly well off background, I study, I have a steady job, a girlfriend and an active social life, I also suffer (although i'm not sure suffer is the right adjective) from ASPD, or some variant of it; as you well know we all fall on different places on the scale and the diagnosis is fraught with complications.
These are some of my observations:
- My quest for self understanding has led me several times to seek similar confessors; the first time was at school and I chose a classmate I knew was attracted to me; this however proved to be a mistake and I was "outed", and as such was then bullied relentlessly for years, which probably made me worse, accusations were even made that I had begun torturing neighborhood cats (an accusation that I deny) It was then I realised that people react badly to a fundamental lack of empathy and emotion, because it's different and different is dangerous; particularly to children and teenagers. It was here I learnt the importance of carefully controlling my social interactions and making sure the mask stays in place.
- As a result I find that I fake most of the interactions I'm involved in, which is something everybody does to some degree, but as a consequence has lead me to the observations that spurred me on to write this post.
- I do not keep friends long, maybe for a couple of years; when I first meet someone I find them exciting, they are new, the possibility for sex, to improve my social standing or even just entertainment is dizzying. After time elapses though I find that after I have experienced all they have to give they begin to irritate me, and the more they irritate me the harder I find it to fake my enthusiasm and reactions to the point where they mistake my apathy for misery and I feel the need to dispose of them, thus loosing me a friend.
- Recently after I thought about this I have become acutely aware of my detachment and isolation from the rest of the world, and this has caused me to have mixed feelings.
- I suppose that these feelings are ones of profound loneliness, that even though I am surrounded by people none of them really know who I am, and most of them would be disturbed to some degree or another. It seems that even I have a yearning to be understood. I did meet someone like me, she was callous to the point of wickedness and yet strangely endearing, we maintained a sexual relationship for a while however she was not self aware and when i tried to broach the subject she seemed uninterested, although I still hold out the hope that I will meet someone like-minded
- perhaps then I am not lonely, perhaps I just yearn to be myself, the mask as i'm sure a lot of you know can be incredibly heavy.
- And if I am lonely, what would that mean? Unable to connect emotionally but with an intellectual need to connect anyway; the word impotence comes to mind.
Well then, that was my confession; if that was indeed what this was. I hope that you at least enjoyed my prose and I apologise for rather taking you down the winding garden path when it came to the narrative; this was a stream of consciousness exercise, I hope that all my points linked well and made sense chronologically. Apologies if they didn't. I would love to hear your opinions of any of the points that I've raised, but feel no pressure; just the writing of this has been cathartic.
For those who have read to the end,
Thank you.
K.