Profound loneliness is essentially my default state. Most of the time, I can at least pretend to ignore it, so I can function on a day-to-day basis. It's like when you haven't had food in so long that your stomach eventually gives up and stops sending hunger signals to your brain. But every so often, for whatever reason, the elephant in the room decides to sit on your chest and makes it hard to breathe. That's pretty much my life--occasional bouts of crushing despair, interspersed with stretches of pretending like the crushing despair isn't really a thing.
I've spent the last 20+ years just existing. Continuing to stay alive, but never actually living. Never thriving. Never making it past Level 2 on Maslow's Hierarchy. For a good bit of that time, part of the problem was depression and chemical brain issues. I've gotten past that, but it doesn't fix the problem of no one wanting to be with me. You always hear about people being in love and getting their heart broken. My heart got broken from disuse--from being tossed in a box and stored in the garage for 20 years because no one wanted it.
And it's not anyone's fault; I don't even think it's my fault, really. I'm incredibly introverted--while I may be sad and lonely by myself at home, going out and trying to meet people would just make me feel uncomfortable and wishing I were back at home so I could be sad and lonely in peace. And I'm demisexual, which means I can't just go out and meet someone new and solve my loneliness problem in a night. Or a month. Or a year.
I have two different personalities when I interact with people. The first one is pretty much 100% snarky, which I use for people in general. The second one, which is more of who I really am on the inside, and only gets used with people I really trust, is... I don't know exactly what the word is, but I think it's just the way that normal humans interact with each other. Except it feels so good on the rare occasions where I interact that way with people, that I feel like I come across as "This conversation is so awesome and I love you so much and when we stop talking I'll be very sad and will probably cry." If I were a dog, my first personality would be the dog who lies down on the floor and mostly ignores people. My real dog personality would be the dog who is so happy to see you that he jumps on you whenever he sees you and literally never stops licking your face. The problem is that most people, even if they like dogs, don't want a dog that constantly licks their face. So I usually end up being the dog that lies down on the floor, ignoring people, just to be on the safe side.
I don't know if my being demisexual is what makes me behave that way, or if it's the other way around. I've always had a problem with body image issues. For most of my life, I've felt like no woman would ever be attracted to me. (Sometimes I would get past that, and feel like, yes, it IS possible that a woman might be attracted to me. Then I would go for a long stretch where no woman actually was attracted to me, and I would go back to thinking my first instinct had been right all along.) So, whenever I meet a woman, I automatically assume she will never be attracted to me. (Activate lying on floor, ignoring everyone mode.) And I have SO much love and emotion and feelings and whatever bottled up inside me; I can keep it bottled up, or I can let it out. But there's no dimmer switch; if I let it out, it's ALL going to come out. (Endless face-licking mode) I also assume that no woman could and/or wants to deal with that. Especially from someone who she doesn't find attractive in the first place. So, basically, the only way I will end up in a relationship is for a woman to see my dog self lying on floor and yell out "PUPPY!" and come over and start petting me. I will be suspicious and not respond at first, in case she's one of those people who likes to pet the dog for 30 seconds and then move on to doing something else. And if she keeps petting me, I might sit up and let her scratch my ears. And if she happily does that, I might tentatively lick her hand. And if she seems to be okay with that, I might tentatively lick her face, etc., etc. (I know, this whole mixed metaphor of dogs and human relationships has gotten weird, but it's too late to go back and change it now.)
Anyway, that's my dilemma. I'm lonely, I need to find a woman to make me not lonely, and my mind is wired in a way that makes it really hard to do that.
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