Just wondering if anyone has the same hermit-like tendencies I seem to display.

I'm not diagnosed, but I never spoke with my mom or dad until the age of 17 (seriously, my mom used to think something was wrong with me until she heard from people's parents in the boy scouts that I'd talk to them.)

I don't remember one conversation I ever had with my father or mother.

I have what seems to be a neurotic necessity to just...be around other people, sometimes.

Knowing other people are there keeps me somewhat sane when I don't know them well.

When I do know them, I feel exposed and I can't begin to talk with them or else I tend to choose to lie incessantly.

I'd like to not choose to lie, but when you're with people you know, you tend to talk about your own life and what's going on in it.

I don't know how to talk about the 5 years I've spent alone (divorced at 23 and realized that something was *off* about my brain; figured that i would be doing a favor to all mutually attracted females by cutting off contact with them whenever it seemed like they were getting close [when I explained this to a few other people, they reacted with confusion and revulsion, like I was diseased or something]).

I also don't know how to talk about the bottomlessness of the feelings of toxic shame which I self-perpetuate on a daily basis.

Or the comfort of suicidal ideation (which would never ever be made manifest; I love the idea of living too much).

So anyway, I feel the need to be around people, but I feel like a sort of manakin around them. Like some hollow flesh column.

I'm actually quite outgoing when I've tried to get around in the past; I was, for a long time, very socially skilled and successful.

But it all feels like an effort, like something I do for other people.

The only thing that makes me feel whole is (and this is the scary part) is when I am *away* from myself. Dissociated, I guess. Distracted, at the very least.

When I can forget who I am. Forget the inconsistencies within my nature and my values, forget my useless regret, forget the hypocrisy of the world and of the face I choose to share in it.

I wish that I were enslaved.

Even if the suffering were greater, it would be a suffering I could blame on someone else instead of something I'd brought upon myself.

Letting go of all the pain is actually pretty easy. I just set down the burdens and observe them for what they are-silly little musings of a self-involved person who really doesn't have it so bad.

But when I move forward, the burdens snap back to me as if they were the payload of a slingshot.

I wish I would die in my sleep; that is the truth. I wish I didn't have the human condition that makes us cling to life as moss does to wave-battered rocks.

EDIT: to be perfectly clear, I'd rather not feel this way all the time.