I hardly even know how to explain this… But I am starting to feel like my old character in Tell Me On A Sunday where [spoiler alert] she hates looking at herself at the end.
Granted, no men have shown up to my apartment in the middle of the night having left their wives for me. (Yet! I guess we’ll see how far down this nothingness hole I go, and if I really start to become Emma after all. Geez to goodness.) No, but anyway….
It’s just like nothing feels like anything anymore.
I feel like I used to have a fire within me, and a sense of morals, or justice, or something – just feelings and opinions. And now everything is so just “whatever, what does it matter, what does anything matter?”
I guess to give a couple of small examples (though I’m sure we could pick many more), for one thing, I (shhh!) took a roll of extra toilet paper sitting out in the bathroom in my office. That’s stealing! And we could act like, “Oh, it’s just toilet paper. They won’t miss it. It’s super knock off cheap thin-ply toilet paper. Whatever.”
And we could talk about how I was completely out of toilet paper and we could lament about how I never venture outside in New York City anymore. It’s my apartment into an uber to work, into an uber to my apartment and that sort of usually covers it. But even if I’m a crazy person who doesn’t ever wanna go outside, like, order some toilet paper!
How do I get everything else I need in a world in which I don’t go outside? I order it. But no, I saw it in the office, knew I was completely out and wouldn’t be stopping by a store, and just took a roll.
Another thing is that I’m legit considering stopping being a vegetarian. I don’t judge people who are meat eaters. People can eat meat. I don’t think it means they’re bad people. But I made a choice to be a vegetarian, because I really care about humans and the environment, and being vegetarian is better for the environment than not.
Also, I’ve come to have a soft spot in my heart for all the poor animals who are dying. [When did I get so freaking soft?] If I decided I think of them as beings with feelings (or at least it seems they have feelings, and worth, and their own relationships and everything) who shouldn’t die for food, then what does it matter that I’m sad now?
And we could argue that because I’ve apparently lost the ability to take care of myself at all, or make any real decisions, or good healthy moves, that I maybe should start eating meat – because I’m not planning my meals or thinking about nutrition.
I’m eating whatever happens to be around (and if you’re a vegetarian not doing any planning or proactive steps, it becomes easy for that to be like pizza and bread and cupcakes (oh my) (or at least that’s how it seems to me). So, I’m not getting enough protein or iron, or probably anything. So, if we’re just thinking about my very immediate needs, sure, maybe that’s a short term solution.
But these are all examples of things I don’t think I would’ve done before. (And I think there are more examples about how I treat people and other things that are also bothersome to me, but I’m already being pretty personal on this blog; I don’t wanna get even more into it about certain things and the poor people who have to deal with me right now.)
Is it the absolute end of the world if I eat some meat and take one roll of toilet paper one time? No, probably not… But, is it only one time? Or do small things become so acceptable that they happen all the time? Do I start to never think about the morals from maybe semi-smaller things, like what I’m eating to larger things like how I’m living my life in every way, and how I’m treating people and more? Are these fraying ends of a life that’s completely unraveling? Like what is even happening?
Nothing feels like anything anymore. It’s all just – nothing even feels real. Nothing feels like it matters. And I hate it.
I can logically say, “This doesn’t seem like me.” But it doesn’t change the fact that I am bathing in a wave of apathy that just won’t go away.
And it sort of scares me. And scares is a maybe weird word… It’s not like I think I’m gonna murder somebody, or completely and utterly lose all sense of morals and laws. I don’t feel violent in any way, or anything truly “scary” like that (I mean, except for the fact that I’m wavering on eating meat again, but that’s not generally viewed as violent in America).
But anyway, the point is, I just feel exceptionally apathetic, and I hate the person I’m becoming underneath a giant constant umbrella of apathy.
But because I’m so apathetic about everything, it’s almost hard to even find the space within myself to care even about that.
As I said at the top, I’m not 100% sure how to explain this. It’s almost more like apathy quicksand than an umbrella. Because I’m stuck in it. And I’m not quite sure how to get out. It’s pulling me down to a place I don’t wanna go, and it’s enveloping me. I feel so trapped and I hate so much of how I feel (or don’t feel at all! Since I barely feel anything…).
[This is from the sexual assault series.]