These kinds of antagonistic situations leave me feeling extra isolated from the entire world (not just from the person who hurt me), but also feeling extra strong. I have this unshakeable sense of aloneness. It’s not to be confused with loneliness; I can’t remember the last time I felt lonely, it’s been years.

I feel deeply (and happily) removed from my family at an emotional level. I don’t have a sense of belonging, nor do I have a sense of wanting to belong. I just don’t care. 

I also feel numb when it comes to other human beings. They are like furniture in my everyday life; furniture that sometimes makes you a gift or sometimes talks shit behind your back, whatever, furniture in all cases. Irrelevant beings in my life. I can think of how a co-worker that I like and another one that I absolutely despise both gave me Christmas presents without me expecting it. I felt the exact same thing in both situations: first dread (“Why are you doing this? Now you want something back from me, bitch!”), then numb (“Pppfff whatever, I’m too tired to think or feel or anything”). I couldn’t care. I didn’t give them gifts because it didn’t feel honest to me. We’re not friends, and the moment this job ends we will never talk to each other again. Social interaction is weird to me. It’s like being surrounded by aliens I don’t understand. I can’t communicate, but what’s more: I don’t care. 

I also don’t have a sense of “fusion” with my partner, in that way that I see so many couples have. I don’t ask for his opinion about anything that I consider to be “mine”, such as career choices, creativity, style, clothes, my presentation to the world… things that have to do exclusively with my individual existence in this world. I find that he asks my opinion about almost everything. This is bizarre to me, so alien to how my brain works.

I experience myself as alone. And I feel most alive that way. The moment I feel like people want me to a part of their something, a light gets turned off inside me and the more they push, the dimmer my light gets, because it’s not real to me. What’s real is I am alone, depend only on myself, can count only on myself.

I’m not saying this is the universal truth. This is how I experience life.