Stagnant

Apathy

I used to be both interested and interesting.

I could look out the window or at a painting and see so many things, feel so many feelings, I used to be able to look up at the clouds and find the different shapes, allowing my imagination to take hold. I used to be able to talk for hours, finding anything and everything to talk about, laugh at jokes and be able to tell jokes. I used to be both interested and interesting.

That changed though when my world came crashing down.

I'm no longer interested in anything, nothing peaks my interest and nothing fascinates me. Reading The Fault In Our Stars doesn't even provoke tears out of me and trust me I've read it many times just trying to cry and release some emotions but nothing works. The saddest book in the world can't make me cry... so what does that make me?

A monster? A robot? A depressed and alone teenager who wants to kill herself?

The last one or maybe I am a monster. I'm a human who has trouble feeling and is so depressed she tried to kill herself by throwing herself off a bridge.

I don't want to be fascinated or interested. I just want to die, to end the suffering and torture that has plagued me for the last year. I want the numbness to end and I want the depression gone. I wish there was another way because I don't want to die, no one truly wants to die, it's our natural instinct to survive.

It's called self preservation, where we prevent ourselves from being harmed or killed. It's a survival instict, the most basic human instinct there is and it's a logical and coherent behaviour to adapt.

So biologically, I don't want to die. It's my natural human instinct to survive but the pain I've been through, the numbness, loneliness and heartache is too much to bare. It's all on my shoulders, an impossible weight akin to Atlas' holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Unlike Atlas, I will fail. I will be squashed by the world. I will die.

"What do you see?"

I glance from him to the painting in front of me. Bristol was our next stop on the tour after leaving Exeter so here we were at an art gallery. For what reason? I have no idea. "Lines. Blobs. I think I make out an ear."

"Where's the ear?" He squints.

"That thing in the corner." I gesture to the corner of the frame.

From the corner of my eye I see him narrowing his eyes at me. "That's a cat."

"Who gives a shit?" I whisper yell in the forsaken gallery, throwing my arms up. "Is this supposed to prove to me that I can be happy? Staring at a painting that I don't understand and one that looks horrendous!"

Surprisingly he chuckles and nods. "That's your opinion. Everyone who stares at art forms a different opinion, it resonates something different for everyone. I think this is an emotional piece, this is abstract so it's very different and hard to understand. I think it shows how angry and upset he was after his wife's death but then years later he found someone else." He glances at me with a small smile. "Imagine that. He was so angry and hurt, depressed, he never thought he was going to fall in love and be happy again, he thought that was the end but then... everything changed. He let life take its course, he carried on and he was rewarded. He didn't give up."

For the first time in a long time there was a lump in my throat. I swallowed the blockage with an audible gulp, my mind swirling and overturning with his words. He didn't give up. He let life take its course. He was rewarded. He was happy again.

Could that be me? If I just waited and tried then could I be happy again?

No. I couldn't. How can you be happy when there's nothing inside you anymore? How can you find happiness once you've lost a part of yourself?