Empathy

I'm not a person with social instinct. I lack empathy.

I understand others and sense how they feel, but I lack the connection between that and how I feel. It makes me seem rather uncaring, disconnected and remote. That I don't have the mechanism in me that connects how others feel and how I feel, makes me different from others.

I DO sense how others feel, even to the point of introverting from the overwhelm of it. But it does not temper my actions. It does not create in me the desire to....respond to them gently, openly, caring.

I disappointed some people who know me well, and who know I am prone to rash attacks on others. But this time it was beyond their forbearance. I was banished from the small hold I had on the edges of their tribe.

My problem is that I am aware enough to see that how I feel and act do not fit, I see how others naturally act a different way, and see me as almost alien. And I adapt, at times, by observing and practicing the behaviors that fit in.

But at what point am I giving up myself? I don't want to fit in. I enjoy being different, and see some of my lack of instinct as a freedom from programing. I need to find the line past which I hurt people.

Strangely I dream of intimacy. I dream of being completely open to others....so open that I have no secrets, and having people around me who could remain unfazed at what would be secret, and who could share with me, those more tender private parts of themselves. Ha. Nice dream alex.

This post is a prime example of "me", I did something nasty to someone else and I go on about....me.

I get so incredibly lonely at times....