We are born to love as we are born to die, ...

... and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love. – Tim Farrington, The Monk Downstairs

Another feeling that is very difficult for me to recognize and/or name, and especially to allow, is affection.

Love.

Of course I am capable of love - and how! To the point that I know no boundaries and shower the other person or persons or the animal with everything I have.

This is not a problem at all with children, animals, plants and old ladies, never was and most likely will not be in the future.

All other people, however... that's where it gets complicated. And I mean really complicated.

One the one hand, someone who is wired as I am is more than easy prey for any kind of emotional abuse, however unintentional and clueless it may happen. And people who intentionally (and with pleasure!) manipulate and abuse others for their own purposes… that’s something I actually rather not speak about…

… but I find myself downright forced to talk about this, because of course this has happened to me all too often in life. This ranges from “really nice" colleagues or superiors who "absolutely need this done" to women and men who “super sweet and cool" gain my trust just to get me into bed… And when, as I had became older and more experienced and also more courageous, I saw through the game, usually much too late, and said no, took a stand and drew my boundaries, there were angry reactions, hostility and total rejection. Sometimes I was or am even directly insulted and in the end even dragged through the mud towards others. Only a year ago a constellation of this nature burst into bright flames, and the memory of it still shakes me today. Often enough, of course, I didn't see through it until the other person, after getting what they wanted, simply disappeared again or suddenly treated me very differently, gladly even in public.

Almost worse is the fact that I cannot read the emotions and feelings of others. More than once it has happened that someone was friendly and downright sweet to me, always smiling... but in truth hated, envied and rejected me.

And looking back... the last years and decades... I've also never been able to recognize when someone has a crush on me. Has fallen in love with me.

It even happened once that I asked a person directly - not unlike that Korean lawyer. I had just begun to realize that my brain (not only in that respect) somehow worked very differently than the rest of humanity, although the thought of autism was not yet there at all. And a very nice and attractive woman had a behavior that had confused me to the highest degree. And so I decided to take the bull by the horns (!) and one day asked her point blank, “Uhm… I don't know... well, your behavior... are you in love with me?"

I can't read any of this properly. Only when a third person sees or notices something and then says something to me do my eyes pop open, so to speak. This can be helpful - if this third person is really an objective third party. But the moment the third person has his own interests... well, it's clear that this can only lead to disaster, of course. Especially for me. This is something that was always crystal clear for my mother and Grandma Rosa, too, and there were always words of warning: "Child, they're (just) taking advantage of you!" Even my father saw that and also occasionally said something like that.

Does all this now mean that I cannot feel it when I am loved or hated?

Of course I can feel it: I feel something. Something quite strong, sometimes very strong. One is pleasant and beautiful and warm and comforting and makes me smile... the other is unpleasant and triggers tension and a certain fear. But it can take a very, very long time before I really recognize and understand and then also find the courage to name it for what it is. And the way there is a process with endless diary pages full of analyses, comparisons (with everything I have at hand, be it classic novels, movies or telenovelas), mathematically unraveled psychology… because I usually lack a helping third person and there is also a massive emotional trauma here, so that the beautiful itself can trigger fright and fear.

That this "inability" alone can be traumatizing won’t come as a surprise, and in addition, of course, there are the "quite normal" emotional wounds… A few days ago, in a workshop with a few other women, we were ten in total, when we were asked the question: "What do you think of when you hear the word love?", they all answered with how the word first triggered beautiful associations, and then sad memories.

For me, it was (and is) the other way around. For me, this word initially triggers a slight horror, and associations like, "Whew! Difficult!" And then right after this, overlapping, comes the memory of Amma and how she showed me love, and that is a beautiful memory. Something that triggers joy, and a very hot heart. And then come memories and thoughts of people like Grandma Rosa... Sr. Fidelis... my niece and nephew... and others whom I love and who love me.

And more and more I am learning, step by step, sometimes with bated breath, in the truest sense of the word, to open up and allow myself to get involved, even at the risk of perhaps being wounded again, even if only because we humans simply aren’t perfect and sometimes we step on each other's toes when we dance…