Selfishness and a Fear of Growing Old

How difficult do you think it could be to put yourself in someone else's shoes? No, I'm not being incredibly cliche, I'm just trying to decide if the fact that I can't really do that makes me in some way abnormal...

Apparently it would be unfathomable for some people to put themselves in my shoes, because I've been told by some people that they think I'm incredibly selfish. This news is troubling to me for the simple fact that I can't tell how I'm supposed to deduce whether or not I really am completely selfish. Am I selfish, self-absorbed, or just oblivious to anything that happens outside my own mind? Have I gone so numb that I've forgotten what it's like to really care about how someone else feels?

I feel sometimes like I get stuck in my own world for so long that perhaps I am unaware of the needs and feelings of those around me. Which I guess is selfish, since I should be in tune with the people in my life. Is this why I sometimes feel completely and totally alone? Because I've separated myself emotionally from everyone around me to the point that no one actually knows me at all? Have I lost my sense of compassion and the affinity to sense the feelings of the people closest to me in my life? Sometimes I think deserve to feel lonely if the way that I retreat into myself projects the image of selfishness to others. Perhaps I have never really let anyone inside this stupid shell I've armoured myself with, and my world and the characters in it are a construction of something in my own mind that has nothing to do with reality. I don't think I'm a completely "glass half full" kind of girl, but most of the time I try to see the good in life. Just when I feel like maybe things are fitting into place and that I'm really connecting to the people around me, the rug gets pulled out of from under my feet by a comment on my behavior that shows I'm not really fooling anyone. God I sound like a fairy-tale obsessed child uttering sentiments of Knights on white horses and happily-ever-afters.

I am starting to believe that maybe I am damaged or possibly half crazy if I ever believed that anything in life would ever just "feel right." It's almost like I'm still waiting for something to happen, and I'm always overlooking the present in hopes that the real life I've been waiting for is just over the horizon somewhere in the near and present future. The only problem with that kind of thinking is that it's just like that Emerson quote on a post-it on my office wall - "we are always getting ready to live, but never living."

Does anyone feel like they have ever gotten to see me for me? Or do I just let people see the me I think they want? Do I fool people into liking me for who I think they want me to be, or do they really see me for who and what I am? Which one is the real me and how do I just be that all the time? I'd almost like for someone else to put themselves in my proverbial shoes for a while just so that maybe they could explain to me who the fuck I am what I am doing wrong.