Such Great Heights

Chapter 2

After the minor incident on her way to the pet store that led to Lauren feeling actual emotions for the first time upon waking up, she expected that to be the turning point. Perhaps that was all she needed: one single event that would trigger her limbic system to begin working properly again. However, over the days following the accident, no emotion she felt was as potent as the anger targeted toward the insufferably idiotic girl that caused her body to shake and her fists to clench. Not even the sight of her new Corgi puppy, Cooper, elicits much of anything from her. Sure, the sight of the little fluffy ball of energy running toward her on his tiny legs with his tongue sticking out makes her smile, but the moment of joy passes as quickly as it came. Puppies used to make her squeal with joy--she would giggle as she would pet and play with them for hours. She loves Cooper and she will make every effort to make sure that he lives a happy dog life in her apartment. Yet, it's a major indicator that her emotions are still out of touch.

Maybe it was a one time incident. Maybe her emotions will spike randomly and she will suddenly be able to feel again. Maybe there are certain events that will trigger her feelings, and maybe this will be the only way she will experience emotions for the rest of her life. If that's the case, it's going to be shitty. And she's going to have to either deal with it and adapt, as she has been doing for the past month, or try to "wake herself up." In her first phase of life, she would find herself wishing to be able to turn her emotions off a lot, especially during hard times, like a breakup. Feelings can be exhausting. But not feeling anything is surprisingly even more exhausting. What's the point of living numb?

Lauren tried to trigger another angry response when she realized that her feelings were back to their broken condition. She attempted to seek out her biggest pet peeves and every single thing that used to annoy her to unbelievable extents. This ranged from heading out to the city to purposely get stuck behind slow walkers to browsing conservative communities on the Internet that would discuss their racist, bigoted views. Normally, these behaviors would infuriate her. She can't even recall the amount of times she almost got into a physical fight with someone over their close-minded opinions that degraded other people. But as she immersed herself in these activities, she felt barely anything.

So then she developed another possible theory. Perhaps the spikes of feelings occurred with one emotion at a time. Maybe she had to build up enough of one emotion for the hormones and chemicals to actually release throughout her body. To test this, Lauren continued to attempt to force herself into the emotions by immersing herself with everything that used to induce those feelings in the past. For sadness, she reread books and rewatched movies that used to never fail at making her cry. She looked up sob stories and even seeked out a list of the saddest videos and documentaries of all time. Yet not a single tear was produced in her eyes. She repeated this personal "experiment" with fear, embarrassment, and happiness--they all resulted in the same nothingness.

Laying on the couch in her living area, face down, head buried in a pillow, and one arm around Cooper, Lauren is certain about one thing: these emotional experiments only succeeded at making her tired. She's physically and mentally exhausted. Fatigue plagues her body, causing all of her bones to feel heavy. The mere thought of attempting to elicit another emotion from her numb, inadequate brain is enough to make her gag.

Though her mind lacks the energy to process too many thoughts at the moment, there is one thing that she left her brain for the past few days: Camila. Occasionally she will unlock her phone and stare at the contact information that was synced from the other girl's phone to her own, contemplating whether to tap on the message button and take her up on that date. No matter how long her finger hovers, Lauren never musters up the will to bring it down to the screen. But as she stares at Camila's contact on her phone now, the urge to text her is stronger than ever.