A great post from Margaret Cho about feeling alone in a crowd and about the benefits of listening to someone with a different perspective.

http://margaretcho.net/blog/iguessnot.htm

If I had my way, I would be able to talk to everyone I ever meet who intrigues me, and take my time with comfortable conversation to ask them about their lives, their experience of life and what they love, hate, fear, etc. Just so I can understand a wide range of individual, separate life paths and really feel where different people come from. I think that maybe it's hard in Los Angeles, because people are so wary and suspicious--they expect that you want something, or that you will use what you learn about them against them, or worst of all, that you are trying to manipulate a false intimacy a la Fatal Attraction and will end up going nuts and cooking their pets.

I've never cooked anyone's pets or taken advantage of people or disrespected the details in which people have been gracious enough to share with me. But I have to say that when you meet people and they open themselves up to you so that you can understand their lives, how they think and the places they've come from and survived, you really can't help but love people. It's a beautiful intimacy, to understand someone.

I honestly don't see myself ever settling down into a relationship or marriage because I don't really have a lot of sexual motivation or desire to funnel all my love into one sector. If I love someone, male or female, I consider them like family and will do anything for them, but it's a blanket love--if I respect you and think you're a good person, I'll care about you; but I won't want a whole lot back because I don't want expectations of commitment that I can't fulfill. I think my basic nature is that I want to love people and care about people and understand people, and obviously, I want people to reciprocate along the same lines, but I never feel comfortable with people getting close to me, and then getting upset because I go out and am in general, just in love with mankind.

Addendum: It's the disappearing acts. I'm prone to disappearing for stretches of time and not returning phone calls/emails because I just need to be alone and to have things really quiet while I recharge. And I feel guilty about it a lot, but it doesn't change the fact that I need it.