Bad Romantic

  I don't talk about myself other than the superficial, the past events, the FACTS. My entire life can be boiled down to a series of events, equations, figures, and triumphs over tragedies. But actual feelings seldom enter a story. I know that I must feel something - I'm a hard worker, I love animals and children, and I'm a loyal friend. Around me you will laugh, get pissed off, and think. I'm conscious that other people are sensitive and avoid causing anyone pain, but I've become aware that I'm just not like you. It is exactly this that has caused a lifelong pattern of failed relationships. In the distant past I've entered relationships because I don't want to hurt someone by saying no, and in the more recent I've been either cheated on or dumped because I eventually bore people to death. What generally, but not always happens is that the person I'm seeing meets one of my rad friends and that's the end. I see the light in their eyes when they meet, the one thing they want and I cannot provide. The same thing that made me capable of memorizing racks of encyclopedias when a lot of kids were struggling with tying their shoes is what drives people away. And I don't blame them.

I see my friends with their partners and notice how they look at each other, the true joy they have in each other's company. While it is absolutely fantastic and I wish them the world, I know that I will never have what they have. I'm not sad for myself, I'm genuinely happy for them. I just know that it is a foreign experience to me. I used to feel like a member of another species, but now I realize that no two people are the same and I'm just off into the left field of the emotional experience. People tire of trying to crack my shell and I find relationships a strangling obligation. They see that I am capable of the abstract because of the way I can paint or convey empathy for another and they get angered because I cannot verbalize much more than the factual. I often get told I'm like a certain fictional television character or that I'm emotionally retarded, the latter being much more true. Making someone else happy brings me peace and wounding someone else deeply disturbs me. I have no idea what would make anyone want to be with me, but I think it might be that most women have this belief that they can nurture someone into loving them. I simply do not understand why anyone else would trouble herself with the effort. Had I been born into different circumstances I would be an intelligence officer or psychiatrist and my stoic nature would be excusable. But I have the "everyman" job and the hard knock origins, so people expect something I am not. I will be the greatest friend you can ever have but I don't think it is fair to anyone to dare fall for one of the most incapable romantics alive. 

This post will probably piss people off enough that I'll have to take it down, but I needed to let this out.