Again in A transparent lockbox

I’m unsure why I repeat the same things that always finish the same way. Except I do know, but it seems endlessly impossible to resist for longer than months. I find I want to connect with people, date, and explore, but then once I begin, I find it all so unbearable. Being asked repeatedly when I would be available to hangout again and living through the same blunted dates over and over. The truth of it is that I like the attention and admiration. I like being a mystery to strangers to where they develop fixations on me, because when people don’t know who you are, they are able to colour it in to be what they would like to see. It is all so excruciating when you have these people who want to love you but don’t even have a semblance of who you really are. You feel like the epitome of shallow desires. I go on these dates though and I like to learn about the people, I listen to their stories about childhood, work, and hobbies, but I think it is almost in a pathological sense where I view them to be a puzzle rather than a prospect. All I know how to do is study and research, whether people, books, movies, or art, it is all I know. When it comes to the affection of it all, there is no feeling for me. You always hear about sparks and passion, but you rarely hear about just acknowledging what you feel as the meeting of flesh and nothing more. I even find it to be more fun to guess what they had to eat or drink before we met up, like “Oh, he must have been nervous, I can taste the vodka on his lips”. It is something I feel awful about because in the event they get attached and I feel nothing, it is unpleasant for us both. I feel some day soon I will hopefully be able to stop and just be. I have always known that I will live a solitary life, one without romantic love and sexual desire, it is simply who I have always been, and I’ll be content with it.