My mom confessed to me last night that she went on her trip because she doesn’t believe she’s going to be around much longer. She confided that she has been growing steadily weaker, and just wanted to make sure she got to see everybody in case something should happen. I don’t really know how I feel about that, I honestly don’t.
I’m sick, very sick. There is something so wrong with me, yet I don’t seem to have any energy or desire to concern myself over it. I’m so apathetic…so dissociated…that it hurts. I feel a connection to nothing. I simply shook my head when my mom told me her reasoning, then made a face like it was something I didn’t want to hear.
I am truly dead. There is no longer a salvageable human being in this shell. I’ve finally died completely, and I didn’t even know it. Secretly I always thought there would be something, some semblance of emotion in times where I was being psychologically harmed…. But with the few deaths in the last years, I haven’t been able to shed a tear that wasn’t forced. People I knew, people I should have cared about…I could feel nothing for them. I wanted an impervious shell, all those times where I was hurt so badly, and now I got my fucking wish, apparently.
I didn’t like my grandmother, as she had never exactly been the kindest person toward me. I often wondered if she hated me. When she died and I had to go to the funeral for her, everyone was hysterical. I only got to see her bitter and cynical, but in her younger years I am told my grandmother was one of the most giving people. My mom tells me stories of how as a kid they’d have homeless people come to sit on their deck while my grandmother made food for them even though she barely had enough money to feed the family as it was. Working multipule jobs. All these tiny instances of benevolence are what I hear about now, things I didn’t know about when I had known my grandmother while I was a child. I had seen her as cruel, uncaring. Apathetic. I see now that she simply took her entire life to become what I am now. I’m too young to hate everything, yet I do. The point of this story is that sometimes we do become what we hate.
I didn’t cry at her funeral, at least not for real. At the time my parents were all I cared about, yet I couldn’t even shed tears for my mom who went into a depression for awhile and was severly affected by the entire thing (my grandmother died very unexpectedly). I forced myself to cry. My first instance that I recall of having to feign an emotion I wasn’t feeling. I guess it is understandable that I felt nothing for a person I did not have fond feelings for. Now though, as I look back…I start to see a pattern taking place, something forming into an idea that I don’t want to believe…. But I have to acknowledge it, I have to.
When my uncle died, I never really mourned. I cried a little and that was about it. He had been nothing but nice to me my entire life, and had he lived longer I think he might have taken on a role of sort of rebel father-figure. I didn’t know him terribly well; he lived far away and as a result we didn’t see him too often. Even so, at this point in my life I was very emotional, almost to a flawed extent (as I had been at the time of my grandmother’s death as well). Everything affected me. The slightest rebuke could send me into tears for hours. I couldn’t be criticized, couldn’t be corrected, not without very extreme emotional consequences. I realize that I was very emotionally immature, which showed in both my bossiness and my loathing of any sort of negative (real or perceived) feedback
My reactions don’t make sense. I was very emotional, yet I didn’t cry when important people in my life died. Now of course, it hits me. Now I get it. Now I understand why a losing friendship could shred my sanity, yet death couldn’t touch me.
It wasn’t me that died. It wasn’t me that was going to be affected by the death. It wasn’t me who was going to be sad. If that was the case then it didn’t matter; the death was of no consequence so long as I was still alive and breathing. Fuck everybody else.
My selfishness reaches infinite proportions. It’s all making a sick kind of sense, all the pieces falling into place to form a complete picture of what I was at the time, what I’ve always been. Why was I so painfully kind, why was I so hell-bent on making everyone happy? It made me look good. That’s what it has always been about, from day fucking one. Getting that positive feedback. Control of my environment and how others in it reacted to me. Just like it is now.
I used to believe I was a stupid little kid too focused on empathy. The dark voice says it best: The truth is, when people got hurt, it hurt you. It was never about them. You never cared about their scars, you only ever cared about yours. What it put you through. To hell with everybody else. I hate that this is the only logical explanation, yet at the same time I can’t help but laugh at the irony of it all. I was a demon to begin with, it just took a bit of coaxing to get it out into the open, and courage to admit it to myself. Sick isn’t it? Yet I feel nothing about it….
A family friend died (much more recently), which I think I have spoke of before in some long-ago entry. I didn’t cry. Not a single tear. I didn’t even bother to fake it when I went to see her family. She painted portraits of me and taught me how to paint realistic sunflowers…. Told me how pretty I was and complimented my work, even though I don’t believe a word of it…. She was nice to me for no reason, yet I don’t feel sorry that she suffered for months before she died. I should feel sorry, I should be infuriated that someone who was kind had to die so horribly, yet…. For the hundredth time there is nothing but void. A black hole where feelings should be.
I don’t know how I feel about someone very close to me dying. I don’t know if I’ll cry or have any response that isn’t purely theatrics. Even for me it is difficult to admit to my own monstrous feelings…. I am certainly not following the societal idea of “good”, yet I’ve never considered myself entirely “bad”. Evil, they call it. It sure feels different when you’re on the receiving end. It’s just a minor inconvenience, you know, being evil. I’ll get over it, I’m sure.
Notice how this entire entry focused on my feelings, my reactions? It’s funny in a very sadistic way.
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Sometimes it hits me hard knowing any moment I could lose someone I expect to be there for me. Since my mother is closer to 60 yrs old, it worries me that she might simply not wake up one day-or she might have a stroke or have to be stuck in a hospital bed; all the while my life isn’t ready for such a situation. I can’t even drive for goodness sake, no job, no money, and no direction. Basically I am scared constantly on a level in mind. So I too don’t know how I would feel or react if someone very close died.
Sometimes I have a feeling that I would feel far too much grief and wouldn’t survive it. It’s almost like I know without a doubt that life after the loss would be my end. And I don’t like to think about it, because out of all the things I have hesitated and talked myself out of doing, I know second guessing would not be an option. It’s all gotten worse from when I was younger, because then, I never wondered how I’d cope with the losses I knew and know I will endure. I just didn’t want those losses to happen, and I was bargaining with God in a way.
My only point is that my reactions and worries are all selfish as well-things I want and think of-and believing I can predict my reactions and of what will happen. If you don’t cry at a funeral or mourn the way others do it doesn’t mean you’re wrong or that you never cared. I haven’t cried for a death in the family for years-I don’t remember if I ever have honestly, that doesn’t mean I don’t care though. Remembering is enough to show I acknowledge the person and my relationship with them-what more can I do? And what more is really necessary, when they have passed on? Maybe I am heartless and simply don’t understand you here. I know how it is when you want to feel something and not just be stuck with memories-to really cry and not just sit in silence waiting for the loss to hit you the way you want it to. I’m really sorry; this entry is hard for me to respond to. I don’t know what to say.