[more] Things I think about when I can't sleep.

 I've never starved,
thankfully.

Never gone more than a week or two without food,
and that was years ago. (I've been more regularly employed in recent years,
thankfully)

Yet even then, I needed to ease my way back into eating.

I been told that the longer you go without food, the longer it takes to get yourself re-accustomed to it once it's available.

The body rejects it.
The body refuses to assimilate it.
In some cases, it can even be fatal.

You don't feed a starving man a 16 ounce porterhouse.
You give him gruel, water, maybe some bread and broth.
Something easy.


I sometimes wonder if the same is true for intimacy (all kinds, not just physical).

If a person who goes for years, many years without it, will automatically reject it, regurgitate it or completely shut down when suddenly confronted with it in abundance.

I know I have.

There have been times when I've gone for five or six years without any sort of meaningful interpersonal relationship.

Hell, I once went fourteen months without being touched by another living mammal (closest I came to having anything make intentional contact with me were bugs, moths, mosquito's, vermin)

 That sort of solitude does things to you.

When someone finally reaches across the counter and grabs your hand, or pats you on the shoulder it can almost shut you down. 

I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that in conjunction with other sensory deprivation, it probably would have overloaded me.

But I sometimes wonder if that's why I tend to always fuck up my relationships.  Why so many have told me that I'm distant or disconnected, like I don't want to be there, or I'm somewhere else.

I am somewhere else I think.

I think that maybe, because I tend to go years between relationships (I've had two in the last decade), and if I'm with someone who's very passionate, or very loving or very connected, I get overloaded, I shut down, I pull back to a safe distance. 

I wonder which of the stories I haven't shared here is the cause of that, or if I'm just a little maladjusted.

But I try not to think about it too much.
I've never really given that thought a voice till tonight.

It's a given, a socially acceptable (and in many situations useful) character flaw.

And honestly, I can't blame them for leaving in the end. 

I would probably do the same.


Anyway, time to stop whining like a little pussy (at least for tonight)...

I've got work in a few hours.

(though I have to say the inter-web is good for this shit, normally I'd have to pay a shrink, a priest or a bartender [or maybe all three] for this sort of captive audience)