You’re telling yourself you prefer solitude, perhaps you’re somewhat of a introvert. That people drain you. That you work better alone. And that’s partially true, but you’ve started building a life around a deep wound and are calling it your personality.
What’s actually happening is that you’ve been running high-level perception inside systems that were never built to maintain that level. And so, you withdrew. And initially, that withdrawal felt like relief, because anything is better than constantly having to translate yourself towards others — just to not offend them.
But, when did you last operate inside a group of people where your intensity was actually useful, not just tolerated for the sake of it? When did you last feel that you didn’t have to shrink yourself, only not to hurt others? How much of your independence is actually your choice, and how much of this is you just stopping to ask?
Autonomy without relational ground isn’t freedom. It’s a prison.
The gap isn’t between you and other people. It’s between the environments you’ve settled for and the ones you actually need to be healthy. That’s structural, and the solution is structural too.
