No REALLY, how are you?

I have had some friends staying over for the past couple of days because their place is infested with bed bugs (and has been since before they moved in), and they are getting it taken care of. Consequently they don't feel comfortable sleeping there until the bugs are gone. I think the exterminator has to spray once a week for two months. They won't be staying for the whole two months, just until they can get their landlord to give them a different apartment. Anyways they are both really stressed about the situation which is understandable, and I am trying really hard to make them feel comfortable, and at home, but that is impossible. People need their own space, they need a time to be totally themselves, and that is very difficult for some people to do when they are in groups bigger than two. We are all in one apartment walking around each other and I can feel them like a towering pillar of stress and pain, and I just want to comfort them. I want to be a good friend, but I can't. At least not the way that I think of comfort. I must give space and by doing so I feel like I am smothering this burning desire to do exactly the opposite. Maybe If I could just tell them that I want to comfort them, but saying it feels so false - I want to comfort you - like asking some one how they are and not really wanting to hear the answer. We say it because we think we are supposed to say it. We use it as a manner of greeting each other and not so much as a question really. I try to ask it as a question, and not simply use it as a greeting, and when I do I look directly into my friends eyes and try to convey to them through some silent understanding that I was not simply saying hello, but actually asking, How - they - are - feeling.

I want to know I really do... I want to love, and comfort... I really do. I'm just holding my self back because I believe that is not what you want right now, am I wrong, could I hug you... you look like you could use one.

I want to wake up one morning and have all of the people that I love wake up, and know, that I was really asking, and stop assuming that I really didn't want to know.

It's one of those lonely self destructive nights where I just want to hurt, and I surround myself with all the empty space around me, with all the people that aren't there. Where words wont work for my any more and there is no way for me to convey the core of my feeling.