I am easily intimidated--until I know better.  I always think I am wrong, or scared—or wrong to be scared—whenever someone wants to have contact with me.  It could be someone I have never met who wants to establish a new connection with me, or it could be a past intimate who wants to 'reconnect'.  Unfailingly, in every case, I choose the safe path, the one less chosen by most of humanity when navigating the interpersonal space.  I suppose I choose the lonely path because I do not want contact; how could I rationalize it any other way.  And what are the reasons that I do not want contact?  ...well, my quest for that answer is yet unfinished. 

When I do isolate, I almost always mercilessly degrade myself for the crimes of cowardice, inconsideration, self-centeredness, and deliberate cruelty.  And only occasionally do I realize, in fleeting glimpses as represented by this post, that I never make a frivolous choice to isolate based on laziness or disinterest.  Never.  Once in a while I realize that every contact I have ever walked away from tore me both inside and out; many of those failures to connect will hurt forever.  Anyone who thinks I could do that to myself in the absence of profound and unrelenting anguish is either ignorant of anguish in the world, or does not know me at all. 

Yet some of my most intimate friends do, nonetheless, fail to see any evidence of the blood-spattered carnage within my heart; they fail to recognize in the fears and anxieties strewn liberally about my life any evidence of something out-of-sight gone wrong; and in the quiet of my isolation some of my most intimate friends fail to hear the muffled—nay, strangulated—cries which might help explain my reluctance to come out and play. 

This hermit might never have had the courage to stand up for himself and his eccentric ways if not for a few brave friends, who fearlessly acknowledged (on the outside of me) that some grave horror dwelt inside me out-of-sight.  They did not pretend not to see.  They didn't pretend at all.  They recognized some hidden agony, and dignified me by accepting, non-judgementally, whatever path I chose upon which to bear my burden.  In some small way, they liberated me. 

You were among them. 

Of course I am sorry if my behavior has disappointed anyone, especially those whom I have loved.  I know you are out there still, in Northern Europe, and if you see this, please don't be offended.  You're the reason I haven't written anything for two weeks.  If I wasn't going to write to you, I couldn't very well write... anything.  So this is my compromise.  I am not emerging as might be necessary in a personal letter to you, but I am writing to you anyway.  It hurts more than I can say to be the way I am, here in the quiet.  But here in the quiet is the only place I can say anything at all; it's the only place that feels safe enough for me.  Just me. 

This is my place, alone.  Despite that, I love you. 

One might wonder how I can say that with a straight face, and remain hiding.  Maybe I don't love you.  I suppose it is possible that I have no idea at all what constitutes love.  You have some historic insight in this.  So let me say it this way:  As far as I have ever been capable of loving you, I do.