Everything either crumbles, or fades away.

I’ve been so much worse lately. I don’t really know what’s going on with me. A few weeks ago I was a complete mess; the numbness was at it’s climax. I couldn’t feel anything. I felt as though I died just a little bit more. I know I should be on pills, I should go to therapy and try to fix myself, but that stubborn part keeps telling me that I don’t deserve to live if I can’t continue to handle it. I think that’s one of my pursuits, to either let myself break down and fall apart, or see if somehow I can find another way to make my condition less…unlivable. I get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching my own struggle; I laugh at myself at times, and the weaker part cowers and regresses further into numbness. Or does it progress?

I’m caught between trying to decide whether this life’s worth feeling for. Is it better to be cut off, or do I require some, even a more primal emotion in order to continue to live? I figure discontent and uncertainty are feelings. Perhaps not as “advanced” as say, sorrow or anger, but good enough, passable. It’s something, right? And just when I was starting to feel a bit comforted by the whole idea, my emotions decided to come running back to me.

I won’t tell anyone what made them come back; that’s my business. I suffered two days of crying in the night, and once in the middle of the day where I broke down and even my prodding, irritated, higher mind couldn’t stop the tears from falling. And it didn’t feel good. I got no release from it. It didn’t want to stop. It only ceased when I began mentally beating myself with as many harsh words that I could think up. Then back into blackness. Back to the darkness I so love and hate. No feeling. It was strange, because I’ve again been cut off the last few days from that oh-so-emotional self. And not just the crying. Everything. I walked into a stranger’s house and had not even the slightest feelings of discomfort—unheard of for me.

I’m getting deeper into this each day I live. And it’s frightening, because I honestly don’t know what is going to happen when I wake up in the morning. Am I going to be over-emotional? Am I not going to feel anything? Will I wake up in that rage? I don’t know. That’s the only answer I have for anything about myself right now: I just don’t know.  

Oh the anger….

So I just finished my midterm….or rather, I thought I did. No, no, not with my luck. Those four hours I just spent on it? Down the drain.

Four hours ago I sift through my school emails, and realize, much to my horror, that my history teacher sent an email to everyone saying that the midterm was due Saturday, meaning today. I had been putting it off because the assignment sheet and two other emails had said it was due Sunday at midnight. Yes, the hours are flexible because it’s an online course. So you can see how I was confused. Anyway, I’ve already discovered that every time I click the link in the email she sent it gets me nowhere. Supposedly that link was going to get me to the questions…as you can guess, it didn’t, it simply took me to the regular, dull main page. So instead I make my way to the assignments folder (which is where all the tests usually are), then much to my joy, discover that in the week five folder (which is what this week is considered) is a folder labeled “midterm”. So click on it I do.

It’s when I open the test that I realize my dilemma. There are ten questions. So I’m thinking to myself, “okay, maybe I choose five?”. When I ask my dad, he says I should probably just do all ten to “show initiative”. I’m opposed to this idea, but after scoring bad on one of my tests, I decided that it’s better safe than sorry. My teacher said explicitly in her emails, “answer ALL five questions”. So you can see how I was confused. While I work on the first five questions, I send her an email explaining my problem (which by the way, I was pretty nice in, even though I was quite angry). Another problem is that she said we were supposed to submit our answers to the online homework program…. And here I am in a test submited through a different program. Yes, red flags everywhere. But then the woman also sent me an email saying the test was due today, so now I’m beginning to question her sanity, wondering if she even know what day of the week it is….

It takes hours for me to write out my answers. Each one was required to be a paragraph long with full citation, and all of the questions go throughout several chapters. By the time I’m on number nine, I get an email back. This is where I go from angry to irrate.

I was nice, remember? This lady sends me back a rude, curt message, that says she sent “several emails”, “the questions were explained explicitly”….Christ on a cross. You want to piss me off, imply that I’m an idiot, then perhaps I’ll BEHEAD you. I’m worse than Henry VIII, BITCH. So I send her another email explaining exactly what folder I was in and why I was there. And all of this somehow manages to stay nice (trust me, I was grinding my teeth with every word…), and I ask her if she could “please delete the midterm” I was taking so that other people might not get confused and do what I did. And yeah, I realize that it’s not her responsibility that I did something wrong, but it is her responsibiliy to give clear directions; I’m not psychic. Oh, and this is where it gets good, she says it is due Sunday. Yeah. After the email I got today that says Saturday, from her. God. How dumb can one person possibly be?

So this is where I start searching. I check all of the pages, then I find a link that says “exams”. So I click on it, then scroll to the bottom of the page, where rage of all ungodly rage, there are five questions inside a folder labeled midterm. Yeah, I know. And who the hell has two folders called “midterm”? And not to mention her damn link didn’t even work. It’s around this time that I get another reply. This one’s more like a slap in the face. It’s a forward of the old emails that I ALREADY have. She never even says that she’s sorry I went an answered the wrong questions, or offers to delete the midterm. She just decides to be a bitch and send me the same damn page.

But I decide that since I’ve already done the ten questions on the one midterm, I might as well submit them, then do the other five questions the way she instructed. Can’t get worse? Oh, but it does…. The pages freezes when I submit the test, and I lose all of my answers. Ha. Let’s all just laugh for a moment in bitter agony. But guess what. I planned ahead for that. I knew that things were going to get worse, because that it how it always is for me. So what did I do right before I submitted? I copied every goddamned answer onto Word. HA! Nanananana! *sticks out tongue*. Doesn’t matter anyway; I can’t use the answers, but it felt like a fitting revenge against a world that constantly blocks my path.

I’ve been having such bad luck with teachers. I keep getting these old, unforgiving drones. I keep wondering if it’s just me, and I’ve come to a conclusion…it is. I’m not “normal”. People don’t like that, they don’t like it at all. And with the internet crap, it’s like when I took my permit test for driving. The first time I only managed three right OUT OF fifteen, and didn’t even make it to the second half of the test. Why? Because my logic is very different from “common knowledge”. Luckily for me I know what common knowledge is, and can replicate it, which is why the second time I went in and took my permit test I missed two or three out of thirty. The fact is, this “common knowledge”? It’s cultural knowledge, and most certainly NOT the best answer to everything, or even correct in some cases. Actually, to be quite honest, I frown upon common knowledge because there are so many mistakes within it. It’s like the question: do you look 5, 10, or 15 seconds ahead? To me the answer is obviously 15. Why? Because you look as far ahead as you possibly can, as it is not only safer, but the logical choice. I’d rather see the semi hurtling uncontrolled into my lane at 15 seconds then 10. That way I have an extra 5 seconds to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. What’s the real answer? 10. I just have to accept that the way I think about things is very different from most, and because of it I’m not going to understand things that are done “their way” half as quickly. So when I’m in their world answering their questions? I answer them the idiot way. When I’m in their world doing my onw thing? I do it my way. World be damned.

When thoughts take you adrift…you follow them.

The jumbled thoughts, precisely the way they came out of my brain:

I keep thinking that I’ve used all of the energy that I had, that my will has dwindled down to the dregs, leaving me weak and vulnerable. But occasionally I get a glimpse of it. I suppose it is a reminder to myself that I’ve still have something left in me. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. These days I just want something to hold onto, even if it is only temporary.

Everything seems to leave me far behind; I choke on dust, trying desperately to get some sort of emotion out of me, even if the best I can get is mild discomfort. Anything. I wonder sometimes if other people have to fake as much as I do, but I know that were that true there would be a lot more intelligent people in the world, resourceful people. As of now I see few. I see nothing in myself, and in others I see even less.

I was shoveling snow off of a friend’s roof today, and I wondered briefly, would I die if I fell? And then I have to calm my nerves for a moment and remember that it’s only a one story house, and there is far too much snow down below to break my fall, so severe damage is not likely. I’ll just end up in a bed for a week, my back worse off than it is already.

The neighbors curiously came out of their houses, one by one. Each making some sort of excuse to stare and gawk at two people shoveling snow off of a house that wasn’t theirs. The couple across the way even let there dog out, shouting at it as reason to come closer to the yard and have a look. I could see them standing there in the trees, the dog directly ahead of them, not going anywhere. That’s when I realized that it was all a ploy. Apparently retired couples don’t have much to do in that neighborhood.

I bend down, shoving snow that’s above my knees, with as much force as I can, watching it tumble off the edge of the roof to plop almost silently on the packed snow below. Ants. That’s exactly what they are like. Human beings are like ants. Ants build little homes, they work, they even make a public dump to put waste into. And when the ants get old, they are forced into the dump site to shovel around other ants’ shit and all of the other waste materials. When the old ants die, they are left there. Corpses are forgotten, just like people. You see, like human beings, ants don’t have much of a conscience. Out of sight, out of mind. People care about some things, like murder and other mundane, “unfortunate” occurrences. But truthfully human beings have no real idea as to the magnitude of their own flaws, how deep this “evil” thing goes. They look away in the movie when they see something they don’t like, just like they do in life. Everything they do is against the word they preach. But ants I have to say, are higher up in the “righteous” chain. They, at least, have no conception of “good” or “evil”, they instead are mindless drones. People, on the other hand, they know what they do, and they still have the gall to believe that they are better than everything else. At least I’ve accepted that I am not a good creature. I know it, and even embrace it.

It’s these thoughts that cross my mind as I mechanically heave snow over the roof’s edge. I have to keep reminding myself that I am alive, that I breathe. If I forget…well…maybe I’ll stop breathing.

I’ve always secretly believed that physical labor reveals more of the soul than any philosophical writings. That even though I should be weak—seeing as how I sit at a computer all day, doing nothing, or staring blankly at some videogame—it’s really my soul, my spirit if you will, whatever it is that my personality is, determines just how far I can be pushed. And interestingly, it’s proved to be somewhat correct. How far you go has absolutely nothing to do with your body and/or how “fit” you are, but instead, everything to do with your will. Perhaps even your anger. I am not a product of the American Golden Age of Fitness, I am a product of being incredibly pissed off. It’s like in The Matrix, when Morphius explains to Neo that power in the Matrix does not come from physical strength but from what you have inside. I never really believed that before, it seemed so opposed to what we’ve all been told, but now I see that part of that…it is…reality. What does this have to do with anything? Each time I do something where I’m going too far, pushing harder than my body is willing, it all ceases suddenly, something else taking over. It’s a power like nothing I’ve ever tasted. Only a few times have I felt it, in certain situations when I’ve gone so far that my body has nothing to say to me but “stop”. But each time I exert myself, even slightly, I can feel it there…at the back of my mind. It’s as though it lies in wait. Hoping that someday it will be set free, instead of being used as a tool in my pathetic little existence. Adrenaline? No…. It lasts as long as I will it to. It is something else entirely.

I want it. I desire it. It’s one of the few feelings I have left, and it is one that might keep me alive. It’s almost like a person. I crave it. It’s salvation amongst a sea of suffering. And all I want is it to end mine. It’s that hope I don’t have, the question I can’t answer. It’s everything the moment I have it, then nothing when I don’t. Figment? I don’t know anymore.

The more my days go on the more I realize that I know nothing, and that even emotion on any level, will never be enough to mend that damage that has already been done. The numbness will probably never stop completely; even as I write this I can’t get myself to care. I write, so what? It is to fill the time, not so much to bear my soul. No feelings of anything will pull me from the nothingness.

Do you know what it is to feel nothing? To wake in the night and claw at the sheets, because even your worst nightmare can’t produce even the tiniest bit of emotion? You know that you’re supposed to feel it, yet nothing is there…it all ran away from you. Abandonment. Just like all of those friends you used to have. Gone away, never to come back except the rare sighting here or there. Why do you feel this fit of rage upon waking? You’re angry that you aren’t angry. Angry that you are such a mechanical thing. And in the worst of times…even anger flees. Then there is truly numbness. Nothing.

And you can’t run away. Can’t be the coward that emotions tend to be. You have to face the world with your blank, soulless eyes. You have to make anger appear, FORCE it into submission. Force it to obey you. The tears of hopelessness fall from your eyes? No, not for you. You don’t get tears, you don’t get sorrow, only that hollowness. You can’t even cry for what the world’s done to you, only look upon it with the empty ever-staring eyes. Feeling…nothing.