I would be puzzled that by that, were it not for the fact that this is something I have come to recognize in myself. It's called "I'm-So-Unbelievably-Terrified-That-Nothing-Bothers-Me Syndrome". I have, as Terry Pratchett so often puts it, gone through fear and out the other side. It is behavior that has characterized my life so much recently that it's difficult for me to remember what it felt like to have actual emotions. I don't have emotions anymore. Everything is all shrink-wrapped and cotton-balled into stillness and muted distance, and I just skim through things without really feeling anything. It is utterly bizarre, and if it weren't impossible, since it would require me to have feelings, I would say I'm getting a little bit tired of it. I kinda miss those manic days, where one moment I was on top of the world, and the next dwelling somewhere on the ocean floor with scary-looking fish with light-bulbs on their head for company. You know what I'm talking about. The moments of sheer delight and exhilaration and joy, and their cousin-moments of despair and depression. Yeah, those. I don't remember what they're like. Do you? Would you mind reminding me?
I tried writing the other night. Not what I was supposed to be writing - because that would require me to confront the fear and do something positive to extirpate it - but a piece of fiction I've been working on-and-off-and-on for the last, oh, like, six years or so. It was shit. I mean, pure and utter shit. Here's a sample. I should be too embarrassed to put this up, but see above re: emotions:
The cliffs were a dark, unbroken line against the icy blue sky. Raging at their base, the waves unceasingly crashed into the black rocks, occasionally loosening a piece of the cliffs and tossing it about in an orgiastic delight of destruction. It was only a matter of time before the cliffs were totally claimed by the sea, and as Azara stood atop them, she felt the ephemeral nature of her own existence. Alternately squinting through the wind – a cold, bitter wind, that ate through her clothes and chapped her skin – at the sea below her, and the ship sailing out of the harbor, she ceased to be aware of personal time, and existed only in the time as it was told by the cliffs beneath her, the forest behind her, and the sky above her. Her fur cloak whipped about her, occasionally catching her cheek with its stinging tail, and the grass snapped at her ankles, welting them with thin, red lines of gentle poison.
Are you embarrassed for me? Thanks. I was pretty disgusted when I re-read it in the cold light of day (I wrote it at something like 3:30 in the morning). It's so emo-filled and adolescent-girl-reeking and all those other horrible things I hate about most fantasy writing. It should be burned, if it didn't mean burning my laptop. I would be indignant, too, but it makes sense, really. I can't feel anything, so how could I possibly write? I used to be a good writer. I could wrap adjectives around nouns, adverbs around verbs, with the smoothness of caramel around tart green apples, combining phrases into sentences of beauty and pure pleasure. Now? Well, you see above you what I can - or can't - do. It would be depressing beyond belief, were I not still shrink-wrapped into abstraction.
I think I know what's causing all the fear and loathing in Charlottesville. The thing is, there isn't a damn thing I can do about it, and for the first time in my life, I can't run away. I mean, really, I can't. It would be an admission of failure on such a colossal scale that I may as well just end my life, and since that isn't something I'd ever do (since I truly believe it is the most selfish act one could possibly commit), I'm stuck. I have to find a way to work through this. All this malaise and fear and bizarre blankness isn't something I can escape; it's something I actually have to deal with. That makes me a little grumpy, actually (yay! an emotion!), but aside from momentary grunts of grumpiness, I forget about it.
Every so often I remind myself how lucky I am, hoping to precipitate a reaction. Nothing. Then I'll remind myself how spoiled and selfish I am, and that catalyzes a brief guilt-and-shame reaction, but then I return to my normal state. No excited electrons here. Every time they manage to briefly get excited to a higher state, they fall back to a more stable, less-excited, totally-blank state.
I know that part of it is the loneliness. My inability to really make friends is getting in my way. But the thing is, relationships require so much, and I don't have anything to give. I just don't. Not as a friend, and certainly not as a girlfriend. It would mean shifting the focus from me, and, well, that's scary. I mean, that opens up new fields of rejection, and it means putting yourself out there, and having people judge you, and I get enough of that shit in grad school, thank you very much. I mean, it's gotten to the point that I vacillate every time I put up a fucking post on Facebook. So if I can't open myself up to rejection there, and if I don't want to be pulled into a needy, dominating, please-feel-sorry-for-me-and-help-me relationship (the only kind I seem to be able to have, fucking savior complex), I must remain alone. But honestly. Someone else's emotional baggage? I don't even want to talk about mine, let alone yours. But people get offended if you just want to have an occasional hang-out-and-chat-and-maybe-drink kind of relationship. The thing is, if they got in my head, they'd stay there for three seconds, and then start looking around desperately for the flashing red exit sign. See? Rejection.
Okay, I'm tired of this. I'm done talking about myself. I'm going to go and work on a paper. It's on abjection, funnily enough. That might be what made me start thinking about all this. I'm doing such a good job of abjecting myself, although, in my case, it isn't unconscious. I know precisely what I'm doing. Sorry if I've disgusted you, or depressed you, or caused you to feel any emotion other than joy. It's the danger of reading these posts.
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