Dear Ryan:

The quote you posted starts with: “As long as you live in prison“, and later in your post you wrote: “the distance my mother kept with me”. I am thinking about your emotional childhood experience as that of  a boy being trapped in an interpersonal/ social-isolation prison, surrounded by nothing, suspended in social void.

You wrote: “While I didn’t want to believe that I was narcissistic, I realized in the last few years that narcissism was a core trait… This person.. would feel my narcissism”-

– I see nothing narcissistic about you, Ryan. I see an interpersonal/ social void in you, a prison of sorts,  in line perhaps- if I was to guess at diagnosis- with (a high functioning) autism spectrum disorder.

“my work in therapy last year to work on connecting“- having been imprisoned as a child in a social prison/ void, you’ve had trouble connecting to other people ever since.

“perhaps I jumped in too far too soon without understanding the nature of the relationship? Perhaps I forced things… Perhaps I imagined something there- that ‘connection’- when there truly was not one?”- with the help of counseling and work, you are like a person exiting a real-life prison for the first time, not knowing the ways of the world: how to shop, how to ride a bus, how to pay bills, etc.

You are unsure about the interpersonal/ social ways of the world: how to interpret a person’s words and actions, how to act, how to react, how to connect, not knowing.. how interpersonal relationships work.

anita