Hi everyone,

I struggle significantly with "sustainable caring". If I were to exist in a vacuum with my favourite things, I would wish for little else(except maybe oxygen).

I love, deeply. I care, deeply but I struggle to sustain any outward showing of the feelings. In fact I think little of it until someone I love looks at me imploringly and asks "Where are you?"

Loving and caring makes me so tired, so emotional and words leave me. I often find myself feeling deep things that I cannot understand or name, that leave me shaking and fearful. Why is it so new all the time? Why is it so painful all the time?

People have said "it is the Aspergers", "it is because you are a closet psychopath", "it is because you had a traumatic childhood", it is because, despite the fact that you have some measure of intelligence, your emotional IQ is in the bin". Maybe all of that is true, maybe none of it is and I am sick of trying to wrestle with it.

I can understand intellectually the innocent face of intimacy, and when I watch it in other people, I want the same for myself so badly that it makes my heart hurt. It is not the action I observe but the frequency of intimacy that makes my scalp prickle, so powerful that it is. For a person who has enough insight to know about NOT measuring feelings on societies norms, I fail occasionally and wonder if I am kidding myself.

I retreat for long periods of time with the excuse of productivity, so that I am not confused by people. For as much as I desperately love people, they confuse me to the core, and I am frightened.

I am often left speechless and impotent with my feelings of love and mateship, and quietly wonder if the feelings are true........

or am I just afraid?

Michah