Thank you. I'm amazed I even found the state of mind to articulate that. Usually, I'm completely out of touch with the "inner me."

Two wishes? I don't know... I would say, "the whole spectrum of human emotion," but, with all the things I've done and what I've been through, I doubt I'd be able to cope with those emotions, especially when I've never had any experience with them. And can I really miss something that I've never experienced? I would like to experience them though. Even just once. Mostly out of curiosity. Would you like to experience lack emotion? Again, just curious.

Maybe a place or relationship where I am accepted. All of me, not just the facade. Maybe I already have that. But, with all the "insight" I've been subject to in the last few days, I'm not sure if she really does accept all of me, or if she just tolerates it because she has nowhere else to go. The real me and the concept of a true, healthy relationship can't exist on the same plane.

I understand what you're saying. And I agree that love felt by one person may not be as strong as love felt by the next. But I think I'm off that particular scale entirely. My "love" is almost the exact opposite of what you described. I don't "feel" the emotion itself, or any real, deep emotional catalyst that compels me to react with what people would observe as an act of love. But I act them out anyway. And most people, at first glance (and even second and third) think I am one of the most compassionate beings on the face of the planet, if I act well enough, which I often do. But it's all a lie.

I mean ... have you ever seen The Nines? It wasn't that good of a movie, and it reached me on a level that I'm sure it never intended to. But the character in the story is a "9," or godlike being that can create and destroy "realities" at a whim and give lesser beings each their own part to play in that reality. But the "god-character" is never happy with these realities. They eventually fail to meat his expectations ... because they aren't "real." He doesn't truly belong in those worlds. He can't establish any true interpersonal relationships because he isn't one of them. He then destroys the realities and the characters in them and spawns a new one. Anyway, at the end of the movie, the woman character that he has "respawned" through his three lives confronts him about this flux-state. And she reasons that he must leave and go among his equals because the life that he had created for himself and for her isn't real.

I'm not delusional enough to believe that I'm a god-like being with the supernatural ability to create and destroy parallel universes with a single thought. But the essence of that story reflects my state of existence on a less than literal level. My "realities" are my own creation. The "loved ones" in my life are people I've chosen to play their assigned roles. I control my world almost compulsively. I change the characters to fit my "reality." And, if my world ever fails, if I lose control, I create a new one. I become someone else. I find new people to play the roles that I've created. The last world is forgotten, and the people who play those characters are ... not destroyed ... but damaged, nonetheless. When Alice died, I left that world and the characters in it, most of them. The meaning that it had, Alice, the key player, was gone. So I created a new one. I became someone else. And I found Nikki. Do I really love my wife? Or is she just the best candidate to play the role that Alice did previously? Can I love her as a person, or just the idea of what I think the perfect co-star should be? She knows it isn't real. I think Alice did too. I, like the god-figure, can't have true interpersonal relationships with my characters because the "character" I create for myself isn't real and their "characters" aren't real. Furthermore, I can't see them as real people. I know that sounds harsh, but I can't. I've tried; it's just not there.

Would they rather live in a real world that could treat them badly? Or in this pretend "reality" that I've created for them? In the end of the movie, the god-figure ended his "realities" and, in his true state, the true reality became stable, and he was harmonious with that reality. But such a state doesn't exist for me.

But all the time? What if nothing is real? Nothing but the hatred and emptiness.