Nothing More Simultaneously False and Telling

 To understand, I destroyed myself. To understand is to forget about loving. I know nothing more simultaneously false and telling the statement by Leonardo da Vinci that we cannot love or hate something until we've understood it.

Solitude devastates me; company oppresses me. The presence of another person details my thoughts; I dream of the other's presence with a strange absent-mindedness that no amount of my analytical scrutiny can define.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 48

I've always proposed that I'm an introvert, while others firmly believe that I'm an extrovert. Maybe the best way to think about it is that I get filled up with others very quickly. Every one of my friends has a story about me simply disappearing. I never meant to be rude, but I simply couldn't take being around them anymore. In the end it means that I've chosen the appropriate profession: I can throw everything but the kitchen sink at my students for a couple hours, but then I need to go into my office and close the door for a couple hours. But does this strange balancing act between introvert and extrovert translate as well in regards to the success of relationships?  I think that I do not have a long, or even short-term, history of success with the relationships I've had with the loves of my life, and maybe this is because I need to be with them but I also can't stand to be with them. Paraphrasing da Vinci, I suppose I had to understand them, but then after understanding them I grew to hate them, or at least hated to be with them (I'm not a person who hates much of anything, mainly because I'm very aware of my own failings, which are legendary; in class the other day one of my students asked if I round up grades, and I said that I routinely do just because I recognize my own limitations). I think one of the strengths of my relationship with Janet is our being willing and happy to both be together and apart all day long. Since she works from home and I only go up to BTV to teach a couple days a week it would be very easy for us to a feel claustrophobic, but she has her corner of the cabin and I have mine, and so we can pretty effortlessly pass like contented ghosts back and forth during the course of a day.