I have a serious weakness for men who present a somewhat inaccessible shell on the outside but are quivering masses of enormous feeling on the inside.
I think it must make me feel like I’m special when these men show me the softness in their hearts – maybe I feel like I have somehow assisted them to feel more.
For about a year after a very unpleasant experience I had in university I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel anything: inside or out. I would lie in the bath and let the water grow cold and not even realise until my lips were blue and I was frozen deep inside. I didn’t feel impermeable but like I’d lost he essential ability to feel anything.
It was scary. And lonely.
And to this day I can feel the visceral joy of the moment I started to feel again; the moment when my brain stopped working so hard to shut out unpleasantness that it shut out all the happiness as well.
I think it’s that time in my life that makes me feel such kinship with males who seem to lack emotions: I recognise them and want to break through the barriers they’ve formed.
I have done it a couple of times now, but the breakthrough always passes. Their defenses reknit themselves and I find it impossible to penetrate them again.
Men who are open from the start are not nearly as interesting; their feelings for me somehow less real and intense.
They say that in our closest personal relationship, we re-enact the pain and hurt of our worst moments, the deepest darkest habits we’ve learned to protect ourselves.
Somehow that makes sense while also being one of the most heartbreaking truths I’ve ever heard.
1000 days 