Emotionless

Sometimes the way he doesn’t feel or react to things scares him.

For instance, that time when his mother was in a car crash. It had been in the sixth grade, a cloudy day. It had been raining in the morning, he remembers. He had been sitting in front of his classroom with a friend when his neighbor came and told him the news. It had been a very brief affair. The neighbor had just taken him home and told him there had been a car crash, and then he saw his parents, both fine, and that had been it. He, of course, had expressed worry for his mother, because even at that age he knew, even if it had been sort of subconsciously, that that was what was right to do. But thinking back on it three years later, he can’t help but notice how he doesn’t remember actually feeling anything. Maybe it was just that his memory has faded, but he just remembers words, not emotions, and that is a bit unsettling, but he’s willing to push it to the back of his mind.

Then there was that crush. Or was it ever really a crush? It had gone on for so long, about a year or two, and in the middle, he wasn’t even sure what he felt anymore. It was just a term at that point, no real aching or fluttering. None of that. When the two of them had actually gone to the dance together, he remembers being happy, and for a while after that, but it after the first 7 or 8 months of the “crush”, he can’t recall all the clichés like butterflies in his stomach. It was just a person, who he probably liked, he thought about, and that was that. But he’s willing to push this instance to the back of his mind too.

And then came the time when his first relationship had started dwindling. He knew, he noticed, with as much objectivity as possible, that he was probably at least a tiny, little bit depressed, and the lack of closure had confused him, he knew that too, and he remembers the pain he would sometimes suddenly feel on random days, but he still never truly cried over it. He knew he became more morbid than usual for a while, and his best friend had told him so. But actually expressing the so-called heartbreak? That had been hard. He can’t even remember if he ever went beyond texting a friend or two saying his chest really hurt. Did he ever really cry over that? He can’t remember. When the final closure had come along, he found that he was basically numb. He honestly didn’t feel anything but a quiet sort of “okay”, for lack of description, during the entire final talk. And he never really hate anyone over what happened, he still doesn’t. He tries not to think about everything that went on during that time though, so he pushes this to the back of his mind as well as he can too.

When his cousin was sent flying by a car that was when he really got scared. He knows it’s selfish; to be thinking about him while the situation should have called for his worry over his cousin is pretty heartless. But he can’t help it. The phone call, the ride to the hospital, seeing his parents worrying and panicking over the situation, seeing the police officer, and seeing his cousin lying on a hospital bed, the entire time he hadn’t truly felt anything close to panic, or worry, or anxiety, or anything that everyone else seemed to be feeling, and everything he wasn’t. Of course, everything turned out alright, seeing as his cousin’s bike had taken most of the damage, and the rider in question didn’t have any significant injuries, just a scratched leg and arm, and a few bruises. So he supposes that was all alright in the end. But nonetheless, how calm he was during the entire half of a day during that whole fiasco made him begin to question if he really was a heartless bastard.

Those weren’t the only instances, of course. He never cried during chick flicks, even when his best friend had even started crying, but that was a minor problem. He didn’t find tragic stories truly tragic. Heck, he remembers in his high school English class, he had read four depressing books in which the main characters died, and he hadn’t batted an eye. He didn’t really get angry when his older sister’s boyfriend dumped her. Of course, he knew how to feel some remorse, such as when his favorite character in a movie was hopelessly killed off, but he just didn’t seem to shed any tears over things where most normal functioning people seemed to. These were emotions that were what people said made humans humanistic, and he didn’t have them. It freaked him out.

He supposes it helps him be more rational when others tell him about grief filled stories. But, unfortunately, he still isn’t really rational anyways, when it comes to his own actions, since his other terrible traits usually interfere and he ends up being a total foolish idiot. Thus, in the end, it turns out it still equals a loss on his side, but he’ll just have to live with this fact, this fact about his lack of human emotions, because he just can’t change it at this point, so he’ll just have to ignore this and push it to the back of his mind as well.