𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 // 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝

Empty and Broken

-Empty and Broken-

             Most people had childhoods filled with joy, excitement, love, sorrow, fear and guilt. Most people grew up with loving families, basking in the happy golden days of childhood before they put away childish things and moved on to raise their own happy, loving families and children.

For me, it was a little different.

My childhood was one of doctors, of masked, distant nurses, of daily needles and tests and sterile white rooms of fluorescent light. I didn't grow up in a family home. I grew up in the hospital, seeing medical staff more than my own family and making friends with the entourage of voices in my head.

I was born broken.

Empty and hollow, the space that was supposedly filled with emotions a gaping, dark void. I felt nothing. The joy of getting a present, the sadness of losing a pet and the guilt of lying to your parents were all things I had never felt, and never would feel.

Of course, the doctors, specialists and nurses had just told me I was a psychopath. Someone who felt no empathy and no remorse. However, that couldn't explain the absence of every other emotion as well. Maybe I didn't feel regret or empathy, but I should've been able to feel happy and sad.

All anybody could tell me was that I was broken. Different, they said.

Imagine, the globally revered, top specialists and medical experts doing years worth of tests, research, experimentation and investigation only to tell you that you were just different. Maybe it was just me, but I didn't think it was too demanding to ask for a more detailed diagnosis than that one haunting word.

But, regardless of how much I begged for an answer, nobody knew what was wrong with me. So, after years of research and toil were wasted upon me, I just carried on with life like everybody else did. What else could I do?

Aside from my tiny and yet all-consuming emotional deficit, I was a pretty normal kid. I played video games, snuck out at night and made up lame, see-through excuses for forgetting about homework and promises.

I put up my walls, never telling anybody about my condition. I began feigning emotions and feelings until I was faking and lying all the time. If I wanted to seem normal, I just couldn't catch a break. Normal was all that mattered.

I pretended to be happy when my parents bought me gifts to try and coax the non-existent emotions out of the stifling void within. I pretended to be sad when my family's cats died, when in reality I felt nothing, no attachment. I pretended to feel remorse when I got caught lying or breaking promises. But it was all fake. My family superficially swallowed my lies, but deep down, I was sure they knew I was faking and pretending.

Funnily enough, my emotional deficit had one chink in the armor. Anger, jealousy and rage. Absolutely fucking fantastic. The only emotions I could feel were the worst ones, the ones I despised but had to endure. I was emotionless, but I failed at being fully emotionless.

The saddest thing was that I didn't know if I could actually love until I'd met George. I'd never had school crushes, and I hated my family because they were openly scared of me, of my undiagnosable condition. They pretended to love me, trying to win me over by buying me things, giving me lavish presents and trying to bring me joy through materialistic means.

But, just like my emotions, their love was fake and in no way genuine. Sad, right? Woe is me. Oh, right. I can't feel self-pity or sadness. That sucks, huh.

Life goes on, though. So, I trudged through life, feigning normality and bearing the burden of the absence of emotion while putting up a happy face for the world to see. I put up a happy face for my audiences too.