Name the feeling

1. I'm in a particular mood today, I don't think I know the word for it in English? It's a shade of sadness. I know several shades of sadness in my own language, but my command of English stops about there, when I need the exact right word for something. Right word at the right time.

It's a type of gloominess, I know that much. And it has to do with loneliness and longing, it's the feeling that makes it seem as if I’m never able to relax with someone, with the possible exception of my mother and sister (drawing lines to what I wrote last year on self-disgust, as if relaxing my personality is like relaxing my bladder, I actually have the anxious image that if I let my guard down I’ll wet myself). It's the feeling of what a kiss would be like on my lips, what the back of my finger would feel like against someone’s cheek, or in their hair. It's a nice kind of sadness in a way, because those things are nice.

If someone were to stick a pole into this sadness and stir around a little, I’m sure my eyes would flow over for a while, though there would be no sobs, and crying like that would feel like hugging a large happy dog, or a stuffed animal, something that’s nothing but soft and warm. Except for its tug on my consciousness, unsettling me a little, except for the questions about my life that intrude on me in this mood, it's mostly a pleasant sadness.

I know a word or two I’d use for it in Norwegian, but still can't come up with in in English, but maybe I can capture more with a description than with the exact right word anyway. So yeah, that's how I'm feeling today. 

2. Today it's Wednesday. The above was written last Saturday, 4 days ago, with the intent to post that day, but it got delayed. Feelings have changed since then... tiny epihanies come and gone, found and lost and revisited, as is the way of feelings and epiphanies, which really makes them into the opposite of epiphanies, I suppose?

Just read through my previous entry as well, from June, and it deals with the lot of the same, the same longing-hope-sadness as in this one. One feeling relieving the other, revisiting the next... if ther anything to say of larger scale development, it might be that I'm getting a sense of this. That feelings are always there, always confusing, the define my subjective experience, that is to say the entirety of my experience, so life will always have little bits of confusion floating around in it. It's the way of humanity really.

It's the realization that I'll have to spend effort, there's no way around it. Action or passivity, they all require effort. Laying in bed, frustrated from passivity, takes effort. I've talked about relaxation, calm... but that has to be something other than not expanding effort, right?

Understanding my feelings, too, sharing them with others... there will always be a measure of confusion. There will always be a measure of subjectivity, stuff that has to be mine alone.

I think moving out has done a lot to spur this recent blooming of feelings and confusion. Being alone with everyday tasks that I used to have help with before. Being responsible for every one of them... is teaching me how lonely responsibilities can be, and if I leave them to someone else, that's just a transferral of loneliness. Even doing things together... muscular action, raising an arm or a foot, I'm all alone in sending the mental command for that.

It's daunting, but not as discouraging as one might believe. Parts of it I'm looking forward to.

Snapshot of thoughts about intimacy and sex

There are many thoughts that compete for space in my head when I'm reminded of sex, touch, more-than-platonic affection... When I see couples in the park, or they could be friends for all I know, like a young woman on her stomach, another above her giving a massage. An even younger man, with more than a touch of boy in his face and a sigarette, and a tough haircut, a woman or girl his own age inching closer. When I see someone in a really nice dress, covering what seems to be a nice body, waiting for someone else. Or to the other end of the scale, the grand stuff  – a TV show where someone acts out of love, sacrifices and is renewed for love. Where lovers have each other's back.

There's the thought that my life, both internal and external, has changed so much that in not too long, I could be able to take part in things like that again. Hanging in parks-things, if not the grand gestures. Or kissing. Then the other thought that maybe I won't, because behind each thing I've fixed so far, there has been new obstacles, and new ones behind those, on and on. And I think how for a while, I did go around doing those things. In so unhealthful ways, ways that couldn't go on. But there were flirtations... some of those nice thrills... moments of more-than-platonic affection... But it's so very long ago. And even I do meet someone tomorrow, who's to say it won't be the only time for yet another eight-year period?

Unlikely. The final thought to enter is that having a kiss, or a touch, or an orgasm with someone is not a very well defined goal, the goal must be to live a life where such things crop up once in a while. The goal is the have abilities (internal), habits (external) where I come into contact with people, where I can be good to the people I know

... the thought of "it's been so long, and who knows how much longer" intrudes, and is explicitly about sex now, and maybe it's not so bad after all? It's not that they are foreign to me, all those thoughts, they are me. Sexual frustration is a common feeling, sadness and longing are common feelings, they belong to me too.  As does hope, and looking forward, and meticulously working to change. Maybe the life I want is really a life where all those things belong, where they don't have to compete for space.

And maybe people to share them with, occasionally.

I was vulnerable for a little while

I was about to write this piece on vulnerability... how I don't even know what it feels like. There's this seeming contradiction about me. I share a lot of personal information, but there's this sense that I never really open up. I've been trying to figure out what that means...

It might have something to do with showing emotion. I've had some real issues with anger in the past, created a lot of conflict when I was a child, hurt certain people in my early twenties, and today I'm uncomfortable with any really strong emotion. Or it might have something to do with showing agency... I've talked a bit about that before, had a thread on the old forums where I learned a bit about asking for things, and I've improved, but I still overestimate how much wanting = imposing, which is really underestimating the other person's agency, assuming that they won't say no if they want to.

I have also been wanting to write about an event I was to some weeks ago. I had a lot of good interactions there, some with single people not outside my range of attraction. But the thought of flirting didn't enter my mind, not in anything but a theoretical sense. In itself a good thing: Being able to enjoy myself without that agenda. In a broader perspective, it indicates a trend: The thought of flirting hardly ever enters my mind, in anything but a theoretical sense. It's never there as an immediate option. No wonder that I never get around to do it.

Now, last weekend, I went to a pub with someone I've known a very long time. We had a bit to drink, and got to talk about personal stuff and shared history, and for a little while there, I became vulnerable. For about a day after, I felt happy about it, but also anxious and exposed. And I could confirm to myself that there is in fact a state of vulnerability, and that it's different from just sharing information, and that I've been avoiding it almost completely for years. No wonder that I never get around to such a vulnerable thing like flirting.

To cross that gap for even a little while feels like letting go of everything. It comes with the socialanxious fear if letting bodily functions go, to leak and stain and smell at the center of all attention. It feels like letting go of boundaries, and giving up the right to have boundaries at all. It feels like losing sight of others' boundaries, as if my feelings and desires could crawl out of me and devour anyone close. And if I had a little less of those fears, me getting close to people would become a lot easier for everyone.

I get a glimpse of other people sometimes

On rare occasions, I get it into my head that the people in my life have personalities. Then I step back and ask myself why this comes with the clarity of an insight. As if the idea had been foreign to me before. I don't think it is, at an emotional or interpersonal level at least. I don't think I treat people like zombies, or robots or things... I do worry about it some time, but I think they would react differently to me if I did. In fact, from the reactions I get, I seem to do a fairly good job at recognizing the personhood of other people.

Internally, though, there is a feeling of remoteness. Or maybe too much proximity. I interact with people on a now-to-now basis, I respond to their words, and their emotions – when their emotions don't overwhelm me. But I can easily get caught up in the immediacy of it. I respond to one particular facet of a person, and lose sight of all the other facets, lose sight of the whole. Like when I have a heated debate about politics with a friend, I forget, at least consciously, that he's also a fan of beautiful sunsets.

When I suddenly come to think of one of those other facets, that's when I get the clarity of an insight, and the sense that there's something I usually miss. And the sense of remoteness, isolation, existentially so.

There are arrows to be drawn between this analysis and autism, not surprisingly, as knowledge of autism is the clue I use to unravel it. Autism means a more fragmented processing of information, a more immediate experience of the world, a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. That's probably behind some of the seeming contradictions in my life (and from what I gather, many other autistic people experience similar things), like: How some of my senses can be simultaneously hypersensitive and numb. How I can be very strongly affected by other people's emotions, and at the same time have problems with empathy. How I'm good at seeing personhood in people, but at the same time lose sight of their personality. How I can be so open about myself, and still feel so profoundly remote.

Come to think of it, it's really not contradictory at all, the relation between sensitivity and numbness. When you try to look into a too bright light, the reflective response is to close your eyes.

I've spent the last couple of years changing, and the last five or six months even more. It's been a growth in emotional and interpersonal skills, an increase in maturity, a somewhat increase in my tolerance for intimacy. I am becoming more used to both people and sensory impressions. One measurable result comes when I'm writing fiction: I'm getting a grip on the personality of my characters, where before they were more like blurs. A similar thing is probably happening with the characters in my own life.

At the same time, I'm becoming more aware of things I'm missing (meaning both "overlooking the presence of" and "regretting the absence of"). I begin to warm up to the idea of intimacy, and I feel strongly that I'm not quite there yet. Insights of empathy followed by strong feelings of isolation are likely to occur more often in the coming months.

(The poetry challenge, by the way, appears to be abandoned for now. I'm quite satisfied with what I got out of it.)