If your loved one is a creative type, you find yourself in a very odd position. Everything you do is critiqued, criticized, and held quietly inside their brain in some disorganized misshapen tomb of knowledge. As a creative type i can vouch that the reasoning behind this is we savor everything. Every moment down to the nano second. Every smell, every ripple of raw energy that passes between two people. We let it soak in to our very being, because at some point we are going to pull it from us and use it to push forward in some artistic way.
For me, my artistic outlet is writing. Its my release from the everyday tug of war that I call life. It brings me great joy but also causes me many issues. There are moments as a writer or a reader were I forget who I am. I have been called distant by many people before, and that isn't it at all. I get so wrapped up in my brain that I forget to be me. I am thinking of scenarios, and back stories, and histories and futures, and love stories, and significant deaths and other events for at a minimum of 5 people a day. I think all writers feel this way, at least i hope they do. its hard to adjust to being one person when you are creating so many people in your brain at any one given minute. Even when you think you have a writers attention, it takes only a momentary distraction for them to forget you even exist.
I don't believe this is only for writers. I think this more than likely applies to all creative types. We have a hard time staying focused on one task. We fight internally to avoid too much interaction because unlike "Normal" people , to much interaction is just bad as not enough. Its physically exhausting which leaves us mentally and emotionally exhausted, because then we can't focus on the creative outlet that would have made us feel better. Its a special balance that we have to learn ourselves and we are not very good at articulating exactly how it affects us or in what amounts we need/ don't need attention or interaction with others.
So, don't be hard on the creative types in your life. We live in multiple worlds, as many people every minute of every day of our lives. We are constantly striving to see the beauty of the world through eyes that have seen extraordinary amounts of pain. Don't let us push you away, and pay close attention to us when we are letting you slip. It shouldn't be your job to tell us you are slipping away but sometimes we need to be reminded that we exist in one world and not many.