I Feel Like I Am Missing Something

Today, during an idle moment at work, I stopped to evaluate my place in the world, and my relationships with people. I know a lot of people but they're best defined as acquaintances. People I see reasonably regularly, either offline or online. There is often something missing in these relationships, something that is present in relationships not involving me. It's because of something missing inside me. Something that was once taken and never returned. I think I'm difficult to know. People eventually give up on me because they don't think I'm interested.

I sometimes wonder if I am interested in humans after all. I spend a lot of my time on my own and I've come to see it as my default setting. But then, in a quiet moment like today, in a room full of people but still all alone, I thought about the ones that have slipped away, and the ones that are even now slipping away. I winced. Physically winced. I'm not given to defeatism or self-destruction (any more) but in that briefest of moments, I had the strongest conviction that everything about me is wrong.

It was a surprise, and it would be a surprise to people who think they know me. I have grown into someone strong, resilient, capable, altruistic, positive, and well-meaning. Someone once told me they saw an old man at my core. One who has suffered but survived. I might even have been vain enough to half-believe them. So the biggest surprise was to see not the silhouette of the old man, but the outline of the broken boy who is all that I am, and all that I ever will be.