"I am drunk in my desire..."

There is a Sarah McLachlan song called "Elsewhere" that has the following refrain:

I believe
This is heaven to no one else but me
And I’ll defend it as long as I can be
Left here to linger in silence
If I choose to
Would you try to understand

One of the verses is:
Oh the quiet child awaits the day when she can break free
The mold that clings like desperation
Mother can’t you see I’ve got
To live my life the way I feel is right for me
Might not be right for you but it’s right for me...I believe...

I am that "quiet child" who generally prefers to be "left ... to linger in silence". Why is that so hard to understand?

Yet there are times even I crave company, in various contexts. Being together does not have to mean "a constant interaction or pursuit of something" -- can't two linger in silence?

I listen to this album as I drive to visit my grandmother, failing finally after 91 years, at a nursing facility about 70 miles from home. I treasure the trips there and back again, alone in my car. I will often repeat this song several times before I let the album continue.

There is another line that captures my strange mood this past Saturday:
I am drunk in my desire...
I don't drink or use drugs. I'm sure that some of my food- and sex-oriented behaviors are mildly addictive in nature, but generally drinking coffee and driving fast are the only vices I have left. So when I feel euphoric, I try hard to understand why.

I have lately begun to pull my head up out of the sand to see what's happening in the world. I have discovered that not much has really changed, except me. I have had a few interactions of a fundamentally prurient nature lately with other like-minded individuals. Each has been positive, suggesting that even at a very superficial level, I'm desirable. Some have been a bit deeper, and they too have been positive. So again I must conclude it's not me, but the other in my life who has lost interest in and respect for me and my interests.

So Saturday morning, I had a some quite positive, quite "shallow" interactions with a few people, which for reasons not entirely clear to me set my hair on fire. But I could not pursue any actual meetings, so I dutifully drove to the nursing home, helped Grandma eat her lunch, and returned home. By the time I got home, my fires had cooled somewhat. By Sunday morning, I had a "drunk with desire" hangover--I felt pretty emotionally crummy all day. And he was just as unwittingly awful as ever, which will never help and never change.

This morning, I crossed paths with a past partner in prurience. He is a medical professional (let's say he's a chiropractor, which may or may not be quite true) with an enormous house in an expensive neighborhood near mine. We share a liking for efficiency, and such was our tryst this morning in his garage. (His life situation is similar to mine so the house was off-limits this morning, though I have been inside in the past.) It left me physically feeling a somewhat relieved, but as Newton taught us, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction": coming down off the endorphin high has left me wanting.