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“This makes no sense,” I’d said to him once, watching him pack for a trip home. “You say you hate going to your uncle’s for Christmas. You tell me he’s an asshole, and every year he picks a fight with your mom. Everyone always ends up crying. So, why are you going? I just don’t get it.” He stopped packing and glanced at me affectionately. “I know you don’t get it,” he said. “And you’re lucky.” Now, lying in bed, semi-wishing I was on a plane flying across the country, I understood what he meant. I hadn’t decided to stay home because going would have made me feel guilty. I’d rejected Max’s
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Alone in a stranger’s bed, my existence unknown to the world outside, I felt more at home than I had in a while. I loved being hidden, and—with Max’s parting words ringing in my ears—I was starting to think it was probably for the best. “It is no wonder I don’t have any friends,” I said.
The things I liked to do, my reluctance to share, my aversion to affection—none of those things were relationship-friendly. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. I loved people. I truly did. But the way I loved was different than most. And, if I was being honest, not all that compatible. I didn’t need to get love in order to give love. I never had. I preferred my affections to be anonymous. Independent. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared differently. I knew it better than anyone: The most palatable version of me was one seen from a distance.
People invented a version of me for themselves, and then blamed me when their invention fell apart. It was unsettling and destabilizing.
The truth was that I was better off alone. Not because I disliked people or companionship, but because I found it nearly impossible to prevent myself from becoming who they thought I was.
Superficial charm, I thought. It was number one on Cleckley’s list and considered the primary trait of the “classic” sociopath, evidence of a glib, insincere interpersonal style. That was accurate. What nobody seemed to get, however, was that this wasn’t the offshoot of some voluntary deal with the devil. It was a coping mechanism born of necessity. I rarely used charm as a trick. Like others in my cohort, I imagined, I used it to hide, to conceal my sociopathy, spurred by the need to survive. Not because I was afraid, but because I knew others were. And what people fear, they eliminate. Or
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“People have never loved me, Everly. They love the darkness in me. They see the darkness and recklessness and emotional freedom, and they’re attracted to it. They want it for themselves. So, they take it. They use me for it. Steal my ego strength. Ride my wicked coattails. And I use them right back.”
I am perfectly content being antisocial. Anyone who has a problem with that can go fuck themselves.” I smiled and crossed out the last four words. “Should hang out with someone else,” I corrected.
“I enjoy feeling nothing. I really do. I think I always did. I was just so afraid of what feeling nothing meant, what being a sociopath meant. And the only reason I was afraid was because of other people’s reactions to my apathy. My anxiety about their fear led me to do things I didn’t want to do. Didn’t need to do.”
“I think I use her personality type as an excuse. I want her to care as much as I do, so I get pissed when she doesn’t.”
“But when I’m kind to you, it’s because I love you. I do nice things for you because I want to show you that.” “No,” I argued. “You do things for me because you want me to love you. It’s transactional.”
The purest love is not born from bliss. It is pulled from the pyre. It is fierce and shape-shifted, slightly twisted and delicious. Accepting, forgiving, understanding, and relatably flawed, my type of love is the furthest thing from perfect. The closest thing to me.
