Message to SydneyB.
I'm insane. Clinically and legally. I've been trying to make sense from a place in my life where nothing is the way for me as it is for others. I have a passion about knowing people, I think the key to being good to someone is knowing who they are as you talk to them and being understanding of them and what they go through. You could say I practice psychotherapy on the social scale and try to interpret and read everyone around me so that I can interact with them in a way that is positive and productive, it matters to me, and it's how I keep in touch with reality. Others see things differently than I do, and I to them in turn.
Now, I started dating a woman. I don't even know if she's real, not for certain. We've never exchanged voices and we've never met face-to-face, but we're dating and every way she presents herself is beautiful, strong, flirtatious, affectionate, mature and awfully thoughtful, sensitive and kind. I adore her, I'm ready to try dating...
But there's this thing, I'm used to being single. Other than one little occasion that lasted for a night of flirting and fingering in a parking lot at a wine-infested gathering, I've been single for over ten years, I'm used to approaching life as though I have romantic obligations.
Now I haven't been screwing around with other people sexually... I haven't been trying to date anyone. I've just been trying to be close to people and to know them and understand where they're coming from, and I know it, and I love it. But now that I'm in a relationship...
There are romantic obligations with dating and marriage... and I don't know how to handle life now that I'm going into it with someone who wants to go all the way. I don't know what to think of her handling me letting other people know about the beauty that they hold and how they're charming or clever... but compliments are health to the self-esteem and they heal the wounds to the ego in life, and I can't stop... so how do I moderate that? I believe in living life with an intimate understanding of other people, it's essential to me and it's part of what's become my purpose in life. But now I'm investing in a woman who won't tell me her birth name, we're supposed to meet in two weeks and I have my fears that she'll ditch on me, but I know it's my fear, not my rationality, that says that.
I just... there are other things, my mental illness is a bitch, I'm walking a twelve step program, I'm terrified that I'll never be able to find a job that suits my passions, and then, again, that I'm finding myself romantically bound and I don't know what I have to do to be appropriate to her feelings and my needs both at the same time.