A Longing I Do Not Trust

I find men embodied as strange entities.

Apart from guys that I’m truly close with, I seem to view men as someone really distant. Foreign. I don’t know how to say it. When a guy sits beside me, I feel strange. When a guy helps me without asking, it feels foreign. When men are just living their life around me, and I observe them, it feels like they are something unfamiliar. Distant. Far.

Sometimes I secretly observe them. How their hair falls, how their hands move, how their eyes wander, how they create facial expressions. How their bodies are built. How their skin sometimes looks similar but different. Everything.

But I don’t do that to women. Or gays. Just men. Or men that I think are not gay. But instead of observing them like a scientist observing an experiment, it feels more like longing… It’s weird, yes, but that’s the closest word I can use to describe what I really feel.

And when they get near, my instinct is to create a very, very hard separation. Like a wall. I can long for them, but I’m scared of them. Of the hurt they can apply to me.

But I wasn’t always like this. I don’t know, maybe just recently… I don’t realize where it started, but before this, I was not like this.

I realized I observe more quietly now. At the same time, I withdraw myself from them too.

And I also realized, it doesn’t matter whether it’s on social media, in reality, or even in books — when a man treats his girl right, when a husband loves his wife right, when a boyfriend is tender towards his girlfriend, my eyes swell. But at the same time, I just couldn’t comprehend it. How? Why? How can a guy be like that? How can they be tender like that? How can they have love? How can they care?

I know it’s human. It’s normal. It’s what humans are. But I just couldn’t comprehend it. How?

And when I try to imagine it happening to me, I feel ick. I feel disgust. I feel like it’s not safe. I feel like I want to run away. I feel like it’s a very strong danger.

And in the end, I always say to myself, let’s just stay by myself. I don’t need that kind of stress and vulnerability.

This is always me. Standing at the edge of the ocean.

Is this trauma?

The truth is maybe I’m scared. I learned that loving them is not safe. It will wreck my inner world. It will destroy the foundation that I built from the pain I had to carry.

Again, is this trauma?