What i stopped doing with people, I would do with potential/actual lovers; coming at them with everything that is me, my whole; a bundle, a mess, unfiltered, for them to sort out; overwhelming them. I wouldn't know how not to do it, I would have to learn and it would hurt a lot and I would possibly hurt them too because I'd realize too late they're not right for me.

I'd experience rejection of the deepest kind and I can't bear the very idea of it. I wouldn't know how to show the appropriate facet of me like I do with other people. I just know that the difference between my social self and what they would end up with would feel like a dupe or maybe even a betrayal.

So either I throw my whole self at them or I stand back, no in-between, and i chose the latter. I keep thinking, too late. No one my age would have the patience for such a raw lover, a crude, awkward, unpolished thing. Why should they be willing to teach me? Don't I want to be on equal ground with them? And also I have expectations of transcendance that they could never meet. And because I'm aware of it, I know I'd let myself get stuck in an OK, ordinary relationship, fall gently and silently into despair until I grew restless again. 

So I stand back, I hide and let my heart - its need, this pulling for attraction and closeness and affection and love - I let it rot away. And maybe this slow, underlying and endless pain that comes from a lack is better than the pain you get from rejection - and then maybe on the long run, it is not.