Wow reading the account of his childhood was very eye-opening.

For starters, I should say I've never hurt anyone willingly, not in any serious way at least, nor for any length of time. Secondly, my parents are happily married as were their parents, my home life was mostly fine. My dad is an emotional black hole but I love him.

What I found strikingly similar to Anders was his emotional reaction to people, being distant, few friends, fake smiles that I usually have to try very hard to make them be believable. He obviously got hurt by people in his life and learned to depend on himself to keep his ego intact, and that's my experience as well.

I have a deep desire to be normal but I know i'm not. Up until about 9 or 10 I was a pretty normal kid, but then my family moved across the country. I knew nobody in the new town. Before the move I had a best friend, several other friends and I had a pretty happy childhood overall. I'm convinced I had ADD because I was extremely hyper-active and my primary outlet in my new school was to draw, most of my worksheets until about middle school were filled with random doodles. I day-dreamed constantly, I was always behind on work because I could rarely focus on doing any one thing for more than a few minutes.

So in my new school, I had an extremely hard time making any friends. I have one I would consider a close friend, though the older we get the more distant we seem to become. So all the ADD-fueled mannerisms that I thrived on before moving, that my old friends accepted me in spite of them, all worked against me at the new school. I didn't fit in anywhere at my new, much larger school. I never really got into fights or was overly picked on, but I always felt rejected just for being me.

DUring high school at a job, one of my bosses told me once "You're a really serious guy, you know that", because I seldom showed any emotion. At the time I took it as a compliment. I'm much more emotive these days, but the damage to my personality has been done. I live alone, haven't had a girlfriend in over a year and I generally have very little contact with people outside of work, and only at work. I really seldom desire any, though I do love to be in small company as long as i'm not the center of attention. My old childhood friends really are strangers to me now, I tried to reconnect with most of them but the person I was back then isn't the person I am today.

I guess I just wanted some more insight into this. I certainly don't mean anyone harm, but everytime I see a psychological profile of a serial killer, I always see a part of them in me, the desire for time alone and the lack of adherance to most social norms and the general distance with people both physically and emotionally. My neighbors I'm pretty sure are afraid of me simply because I seldom have any guests and I keep to myself for the most part, especially after my last girlfriend moved out over a year ago. I really don't know any of my neighbors very well at all even though I've lived here over 5 years.

I want to be a normal, people enjoying person, I have that drive in me, but something stops me. Not sure why I posted, but there are a lot of wise people who post here so I'm curious what input they might have (good or bad).