Morning all.
I don’t think i can be concise enough to contextualize my problem, but i sure will try. Another observation is that english is not my first language, so i apologize in advance if some grammar mistakes happen. I tried to talk about this on reddit, because i would like to know other peoples perspective, but i got no replies, so here i go.
Never in my life the ‘social’ thing appealed to me, i was always a loner, since my teen years. Also, that style of life never actually bothered me, i’ve enjoyed solitude for all these years, even in childhood i did not have many friends, maybe one or two. With that way of living, there is always something else to balance it, and in my case was the novels, specially the old ones. It all started with the classics, Dostoevsky, one i read when very young, if i can recall i was 13 reading The Gambler, the easy ones, and with time it went to some more complex existential ramblings. Now, with this kind of life, you actually live a fantasy world, not the well known optimistic fantasy, but nevertheless a fantasy, of characters and wonderings, imaginary passions and even imaginary afflictions, you see things differently, i suppose some of you could relate to the feeling of reading great novels and for a while living life as part of it. When it comes to my life, i’ve always lived these stories as part of my own, and it has always been humoring me, really. Also, i’ve always believed that what goes on our mind wasn’t so different than reality, in the end reality can only be perceived from our own perspective, which comes from our mind anyway. The few social encounters that i’ve had, my references or joke attempts had always been about some books (it’s what i’ve known best afterall), and the circumstances a lot of times got awkward. As an example, i was taking German classes at some point, and there was this guy who missed two classes and some women were wondering what happened to him, then i said he might be having problems with becoming a bug (an easy reference to Kafka, and i thought people would get it, we were in a german class), but nobody got it, and i just heard a younger girl saying “so random…”.
This kind of stuff, once again, never bothered me, at best i was amusing myself with it, and it didn’t matter what others thought.
To the most recent times, the problem came. I have met a woman… Yes, a woman, the great fragility of men, women… And i knew right away she was special, peculiar, and most importantly, like myself she was marginalized at her own wish. Both of us disliked social media, tattoos, bars, nightclubs, noise (and most things that a lot of people can’t live without in our time and age), and both of us lived a literary life - and by that i don’t mean a professor, or someone who works with it, but people who fantasize about it, who actually live it. In my country, literature is not very popular, it’s mostly about dancing, partying and etc., (you guessed it, its Brazil). This woman, at our first conversation, told me she bought a dual-language book (german and english [there wasnt a dual language with portuguese]), and it was Narcissus and Goldmund, a book from my favorite author (Hermann Hesse) that i had never known anyone who had even heard about it, here. Then, she asked me: “what are you? Narcissus or Goldmund?”, and i said “i’m probably more of a Siddhartha”, and this was, i believe, the first time in my life where someone actually got a weird reference of mine. I know that, for some of you, this might sound so absolutely boring, but it felt really special for me, and i knew that, if there is someone, she is the one.
We kept talking for a while, and it was absolutely gorgeous, i couldn’t stop thinking about her, and with time i decided i had to move forward, so i subtly started talking about more serious things, like the future, asking her about what she wants for her life, family, children, etc. Then, eventually, i slowly started showing her my affections, telling how much i thought she was different, at some point i even told her, out of nowhere, that in my 35 years of life, i would certainly remember if i knew someone as peculiar as herself, but i didn’t… remember. She wouldn’t respond very charismatically, but she did not have that much charisma since the beginning, so not a big deal for me anyway. I must add that a lot of our conversations, most of it actually, were texting, both of us were very busy at the time with work and all.
But, at a certain day she told me that she had feelings for someone, and that someone wasn’t me. This was so very painful that i will dismiss the words to describe it, “but ok”, i thought, i suppose affection comes with time, and she is not dating anyone, she only have feelings for this guy, this might change at some point. We kept talking, and i started realising that i wasn’t even close to be as important to her as she was to me, the imbalance was absurd, time has told me that, the more i talked to her, the clearer it became, and the more painful. For me, we were some lost souls who found each other, the only complement i came to know that i needed, but for her i was just a guy who liked the same things and nothing more.
This is not to say she has any fault on it, she was always very polite to me, but now, the solitude that i’ve always enjoyed became something of a punishment, i can’t bear it, this never bothered me before but after meeting here it feels like it bothered me since i was born. I’m even losing weight, and reading - the last few days - is just a kind of torture to remind me of her. She is a bit younger than me, 26, almost ten years, but this i don’t see as a problem, or is it?
It seems like i need to have a family and children now, and i mean literally, it actually feels like a NEED, for the sake of my happiness, and she is the one, clearly, for me. I am not the one for her, also clearly, this asymmetry appears to be incredibly unfair, though i know, rationally, it isn’t, it’s just part of life. Maybe my style of life since the beginning made me this way, unaware of how some things work and the frustrations are magnified in an almost intolerable way.