Emotion

"There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love." --Oscar Wilde

*All names have been changed so as to not incrimminate real people

I can tell when I’ve been really hurt, REALLY hurt, by my emotions.
When something extremely bad happens to me, I don’t go into a rage, kicking and screaming, pointing and blaming, fuming and reddening.
I don’t get into a sad state, crying and sobbing and feeling self-pity. There’s no “O woe is me” stuff or thinking about how awful everything was.
There’s no depression. No suicidal thoughts or “the world sucks” thoughts. Life is always beautiful and will always continue.
I don’t go all philosophical. I don’t consider the spiritual side of the tragedy, nor do I look at it from a world’s perspective and see that it’s all meaningless in the game of life.

All these ‘emotions’ happens over the minor things, no matter how “big” they seem. I would get emotional if I missed out on a place in a Uni, or if a friend was moving away. But the way I react when something really hurts me is total and utter neutrality.
There is literally no emotion.
It’s like hollowness, nothingness. It’s like saying darkness is absence of light. This emotion is absence of emotion. It’s a black hole of emotion. I don’t laugh, or cry, or think. I just stop and put myself on auto-pilot for a while. It’s not indifference, it’s not like I don’t care. I just don’t feel anything. If anything, I feel guilty that im not feeling anything.
After a while, the emotions just run together like channels meeting a river. I’d be laughing, and then crying. I’d feel depressed, then realize how stupid it is to be depressed in the game of life.
When my auntie, uncle and two cousins died in a car crash I felt it. I loved them to pieces, and I felt nothing. No thought passed through my head, there was just…nothing. Of course I think (I would even think about the bad thing) but it almost like I was looking at it from outside. A third party to the exceptionally melodramatic episode of Neighbors I call my life.

Liz said no, and I knew she would. All the fantasies I had of us getting together in some romantic format were all just fantasies. I even think I knew that when I thought them up.
I remember having fantasies of her saying it too, “I love you too, but as a friend”. I remember fantasizing my tumultuous anger, my extreme depression, my thirsty longing. I had felt these all the time throughout this experience, and I expected a rush of these emotions when I would be confronted with the pain. I never imagined feeling my ‘emotion’ but that’s what I got.
She said those exact words. “I love you too, but as a friend”. I knew, as soon as I read it that I had been cut deep. I knew, because I didn’t feel. I didn’t even feel that *sigh* that you get when disappointed (like when you open a present to discover it’s not what you want). My hands stopped shaking and steadied, my brain stopped dreaming and sharpened with pinpoint precision, my eyes glazed over. I looked at the words on the screen and didn’t feel disappointed, un-loved, relived, happy, sad or angry. I felt like an innate object, a rock in calm waters.

I guess now it’s just a waiting game. Of course, I’m going to keep seeing Liz. I still love her and I want to be around her. As friends, or in a relationship, I still want to spend time with her because I enjoy it. And that’s the way it’ll always be.