I wish that I could separate my thoughts from my consciousness. Wouldn’t it be easier that way? To float in some apathy freely, without any worry of being drowned in your thoughts?

It’s hard to remember what you fall in love with. Usually it is an expression in the eyes, an exchange, or a gesture or the sound of a voice, a word spoken. Those things can get blended with the atmosphere around you at the time — a fragrance in the air, a play of light, even music — so that they become almost one with each other and when you see or smell or hear the memories of a place you feel the love again, but as a pang of loss. Sometimes the feelings get connected so deeply to your body that even your own skin, your own eyes in the mirror remind you of what you no longer have. Sometimes it only takes a few things for someone to attach the way I did — enough hunger, enough loneliness, enough loss, someone who will feed you and touch you and listen. Sometimes attachment — call it love — is more complex than that. When you are in the state I was in, love can be tied up with other things, like excitement and danger, and the desire to know what really happened, what actually took place.

> writing

> a cure for apathy

“I’m stuck.”

“Stuck? What do you mean?”

“I’m just…stuck. My consciousness knows that I am physically here; that I’m alive. But I know that I’m not here mentally. I see others go by, going on with their lives, with their own thoughts and that’s fine. I watch them through apathetic eyes. I can’t bring myself to care anymore. Even people that I used to care about…I just can’t bring myself to do so. It’s not that I hate them. It’s not that I ignore them on purpose. Trust me, if that were the case, one would definitely feel an invisible barrier between us. I just stopped caring. The idle chatter doesn’t interest me anymore. I’m too absorbed in my own thoughts now. I can try to care, but in the end, it’s ridiculously fake; I don’t feel like myself anymore. Lately, I haven’t been feeling like myself.

“I used to care. I used to be curious and show interest in not only others but in life in general. But now, I’m just stuck. I’m there but not there. I interact with others, but I give automated answers. I don’t feel anything. I used to. Until I realized that It was easier not to care about anyone.

“It’s a defense mechanism, and at the same time it’s the easiest way to protect yourself. The only problem with doing this is that you slowly lose yourself. You become numb to everything. You just don’t care. And you hate that you feel that way, and yet you don’t stop.”

“Can’t blame you for that. It’s in human nature not to want to change.”

“You don’t understand. I want to change this. I would do anything not to feel apathetic. Do you know what it’s like to wake up without a care in the world? To go through the motions of living like a normal human being, without putting any thought into it?

“…I would do anything to feel something. I don’t care if the feeling is negative or positive; rather I want it to be negative. I don’t trust love to last as long as hate.”

“…So, I couldn’t love you?”

“…Could you repeat that?”

“You heard me, don’t act like you haven’t.”

“…I…don’t understand.”

“I’m asking you if I could love you. I’m asking you if I can trail kisses down your neck and if I can embrace you, and hold you together. I’m asking you if I can wake up in the morning with you still by my side. I’m asking you if I can show you what it means to love and what it means to be loved.”