Broken, like me.

When I was about 11, I had a friend who had a couple of porcupine kits. Mom was road kill. He had them as pets for the summer. At the time they are about the size of a cantaloupe.

You can pet a porcupine. You need to be gentle. And you pet from nose to tail.

Something I do repels people. No, that's too strong. Something I do causes a disruption in the normal transition from small talk to deep talk.

I can start conversations with people in checkout lines. I can make them laugh, learn about their kids. I can ask appropriate questions. This tells me I'm neither a bad communicator, or unwilling to initiate.

Customers come to my tree farm. Sometimes we chat for an hour about stuff other than trees. Often these discussions are interesting. I try a gentle probe to see if they are interested in meeting further, not as a date, but just to carry one talking, or explore common interests.

On grindr, once for a month I went through every profile looking for people who were into hiking. For each one, I asked, "Would you like to go on a hike in the river valley, grab beer and burger after." Deafening silence.

I know I'm not good at reading non-verbal communications. And if there is someone that I'm very interested in, I will be up front about this. "I don't read non-verbal stuff very well. So, please tell me stuff in words. Please confirm by asking me." And often I get a response of relief: They are not fans of the ambiguity either.

I had one guy I really hit it off with. Not for sex. He's straight, I'm gay. But he was funny, he laughed at my jokes too. We had some common interests. Even some cooperative business ideas. We were seeing each other several times a week, jsut to talk. We spent a night and did shrooms and watched the stars by the camp fire.

And suddenly I was the worst person in the world. He cut all ties, and refused to speak or answer my emails. Maybe he was BPD.

Other symptoms:

I have never been aware of anyone flirting with me. Both as a unix geek, and as a teacher/master/program person in a boys boarding school, I'm familiar with the light teasing banter that occurs in the work place. I engage in this. I engage in word play, puns, and spoonerisms and malaprops. But I never saw any of that banter become interest in something closer.

In hindsight, I realize I'm not one of those people who are so ugly I have to keep a bag over my head to keep people from gasping in horror. Nor did my mom have to hang a ham rind around my neck to make the dog play with me. So there probably were flirts, and I'm just blind to them.

I was visiting friends one time. They would invite me to supper when they had computer problems. In one sense, "Tolerated because I'm useful". In another sense "Swapping a half hour of geek expertise for a meal I don't have to cook." Fair trade. I think G. and D. actually liked me, and this was a way they could interact with me. They too may have been wary of the quills.

The weather was crap. I spent the night in their laundry-room guest suite.

G. some years later told me this story:

--------------------- G's story ------------------

"Our daughter Chris came down to pee later that night. I was still up. She came down naked. I critized her pointing out that we had a guest in the basement. What if also need to pee." (Only one bathroom in their townhouse)

"Oh Mom. Dart's not wired that way."

I asked Chris what she meant.

"I'm 16. I'm pretty. I see how boys look at me. They like me as a person. But they also see me with desire. Even the male teachers look at me that way. They are perfect gentlemen about it, and professional. But they see, and some part inside wants.

"Dart sees me as a person. He's fun to talk to. He's one of those few adult friends of yours who seems genuinely interested in what life is like for a teenager. But that other spark isn't there. I could walk down to the laundry room dressed like this to get stuff out of the dryer. He might look up, "Hi Christine, and maybe ask what was up. You know the polite interest when people break their pattern. He might even appreciate my body the way an artist would. But nothing more. I feel safe with him."

--------------------- Story end ------------------

One of the biggest compliments I've ever gotten.

At that time I considered myself ace. I was in my late 30's. I'd never gone on a date. Never went to a dance. Never got drunk with my peers in high school or college.

At the boarding school I swapped duties with other staff, and that was bi-directional. I made what I thought were good friends. When you have 4 staff and 30 kids engaged in a 3 week 700 km canoe trip through the Canadian Wilderness you get close. My life depended on others holding up their end of the canoe on a portage. As theirs did me.

But those friendships didn't survive separation from the school.

I'm diagnosed OSDD -- upgraded from CPTSD, which in turn was an upgrade from PTSD.