Sense of Smell

I smell like my college dining cooperative: bleach, onion, and cooking oil gone cold. Add in my appropriately pruny fingers and the brand of Annoyed-At-A-Certain-Type-Of-Person I'm chewing and this is a total flashback to Nameless Liberal Arts College.
Birdie, you'll know what I mean. (Token Pakistani friend, too, if you still ever read this...)

James Spader and Neighbor Guy and a lot of the people at the coop back at Nameless (and, come to think of it, in my family...good thing I have the most recent two so I know it's not just Jews...) have been seriously, deeply, validly hurt by people close to them. We see these scars, conscious or not, and sooner or later we find one another.
But I don't think James, NG, and many many other Wounded Souls ever see beyond themselves. It's not something they do to be cruel or hurtful, their minds just don't work in a way that fully and meaningfully feel for and empathize with other people. It's like the difference between being able to translate from a foreign language and actually thinking in the foreign language. Empathy v. sympathy suggests (to me at least) that you had to have gone through the experience or something comparable in order to empathize, but not to sympathize. What I'm trying to express is different. It's for those of us who can't help but care. Maybe we get labeled "too sensitive" and we still think we're assholes because we can empathize with assholes, too.
Like most things, people come in various shades. In the Wounded Souls Club, I think the wounding process shoves members to one side or another: you can't see beyond yourself and can only relate to people in terms of yourself -or- you're hypersensitive and fear the consequences of exhaling.
I'm afraid to exhale, so I can only spend so much time with people on the other side without recouping. I used to think I had to spend time with and help those people. They are my parents, a number of Boys I've Liked and even Loved, my life-defining friendships. Punish myself for thinking of myself and being a selfish, spoiled little brat and feeling jealousy and disappointment. Find someone truly self-centered and serve them, follow them, fix them.

I get points for realizing that's exactly what Neighbor Guy is very early in our friendship. Maybe I'm being too quick to judge my most blatant current Male Suitors, but every time I tell myself I should give them another chance, spend more time with them, I'm back with the sense that they're somewhere between charity work and punishment.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:
I just want to be understood. By a person I understand. Reciprocal sharing the burden of the universe. And no being mean.
Really, as many people as possible, all within walking distance, would be great. I'm getting so much closer. Stupid non-reciprocal levels of feeling with Possible Boy. Stupid him going on all these dates and enjoying himself and still having his stupid heartstrigns get yanked by Aural Girl and me not being able to be the friend he needs because I am, alas, the stupid girl that I am.