I feel all alone

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I am not physically alone. In fact, I'm never actually physically alone - I am married and have a small child, and also have regular contact with my parents who watch our kid while I work. But I feel alone.

Every time I get interested in something or excited about something, I don't tell any of my family or friends because I know for sure they will not understand. I've been secretive about my interests ever since I was a child, because I knew that no one would understand. No one is actively mean or abusive to me about these things, but they're condescending, or just incomprehending, and I feel even more alone if I try to share.

I have never, in my 45 years of living, met someone who would "get" my excitement about any of the things I find interesting. Never. And it's not like I'm into anything esoteric. I like opera. I like to read and especially enjoy writers who have a good prose style (I love a well-turned sentence). I like linguistics and etymology. It's stuff like that - perfectly ordinary normal interests, albeit a bit bookish. But because I don't enjoy the same things about it that a NT person would enjoy, I can't share any of these pleasures with anyone else.

When I was a kid and enjoyed reading, I focused on the minutiae - the sentence structure and style - rather than the plot. That, apparently, was the "wrong" way to enjoy reading. My father would grill me about the plot until I shut down from the pressure and concluded "Why do you even bother to read if you can't remember the story?" To this day, I do not tell my parents about what I'm reading. Nor do I tell anyone else. The best thing about e-books is that they enable perfect privacy in this respect.

I've gotten my life to the point where the only thing that my family sees is the outer shell - the mother, wife, employee, daughter, whatever role I'm playing. No one sees the inside. My spouse, kid, parents, or friends - I don't let anyone in.

And sometimes it feels very lonely to not let anyone in.

I would seek counseling or therapy for this. While it's fine to not share everything and keep things to yourself, it shouldn't be to the point where you feel lonely. This seems like something more than fear or anxiety about sharing interests with others. I would do it not only for yourself but for you family as well because I'm sure your significant other would be more than happy to learn this side of you and it could potentially cause you to dissuade your child from sharing their interests with others.

You never know, your child may grow up with the same interests as you(or something as niche) and if you don't feel comfortable sharing your interests then that child may end up feeling alone as well and you wouldn't have the tools necessary to help them.

my family is not interested in the things I get excited about either. I found interest groups using facebook and now I have plenty of others who share the same interest, get excited about what others find or learn or experience, and it has helped me make social connections where sometimes I can share actual person to person time locally to do an activity from the interest groups with one or more others. It is easier to get to know somebody on line first then arrange a public meeting to do something related to an interest... I now have a very small group of friends who I can sometimes go out somewhere with to do things related to our shared interest together. We still spend most of our time online with the rest of the group. Sending best wishes. Your interests might not be important to the others in your family, but you can find others to share them with.