IV0RY DRE▲M

Anonymous asked: Are you considering the possibility of going to Law school?

I’m enrolling this June.

I am writing this for the purpose of finding out exactly how I feel.

I’m convinced that I don’t feel a thing but this may only be a momentary numbness, a novocain effect after going through some shit. At least that’s what I told myself when I realized this has gone on longer than it ever has.

My mind has gained this unstoppable ability to adapt too fast in painful situations that there is little or no time for reflection. To be short about it, I have simply lost all care, having internalized the ebb and flow of life, loss and gain, the cycle of fortune, the meaninglessness of all physical things, the arbitrariness of circumstance. I guess you could say I take all the lessons I learn to heart without ever having to push myself or look into the mirror and declare with forced conviction that it’ll be all right in the end, that it gets better. I don’t have to. I may have to go through the painful experience but my mind is ten steps ahead, already knowing that of course, it always gets better, and that the only thing that’s stopping it from getting better is yourself.

 Welcome to my logic.

I never did this to myself on purpose. This is how I react to pain. I feel it and let it go.

I consider this to be the most perfect outlook towards life, detachment from material things and placing value only on the basic human needs. Emotional well being is my first priority. Everything that threatens to harm it is quickly devalued, shunned from the locus of my concerns. It doesn’t take a second for me to process this. It has become instinct. That is my trouble now. How can I explain this to the people who matter who are asking me what has become of me? More importantly, this inexplicable part of my character has left me void of all creative impulse. If I cannot write at all, I might as well be dead.

This particular way of being makes me come off as cold, unfeeling, and selfish. I am told I am being too silent for my own good. I beg to differ because it is exactly my own good that I am protecting with my silence. But I know I can’t simply keep it all to myself if I want to put a stop to all the questions. Questions that really wouldn’t matter to me if they had not come from people I cared about.

I found that I couldn’t answer any of those questions because it never occurred to me to explain it to myself. In the past I have learned that the things you don’t say can haunt you in ways you’ll never expect. I see now why it is necessary to explore my silence, what has caused it, and why it is so.

I’ll begin by trying to explain what I feel. Even though I said I didn’t feel a thing, it’s actually quite impossible. I am human after all.

Then: Pain and all the other offshoots of that emotion has made me this way. Pain was the catalyst, the proverbial trigger, the force that once pushed me and pulled me in every which way until I snapped. Pain that comes from love, all kinds of love, but the same love that makes you forget yourself, that sets aside your self-awareness, that makes you wholly unselfish. Two four letter words that are peas in a pod; they manipulate you in an out of body experience but you’ll be too far gone to resist. They feel different but they are essentially the same, and both things fueled my creativity like no other.  I wrote and couldn’t stop. On flyleafs, on empty cigarette cartons, bathroom stalls, my own hand, when a pen and paper took too much time to grab. The impulse was fire and I thought I’d burn if I didn’t let it out.

The fire is gone, quenched by a calm apathy.

Now: Lightness. Like floating in the ocean needing nothing, not even gravity to hold me in place. Subject to the whims of the tide but doing nothing, accepting everything. The beach is my favorite place to be and it used to be a place to escape. Now I only have to close my eyes to experience the serenity it brings. I have placed the ocean inside me and let it engulf me with quietude. It may rage and storm on certain days but in its depths only a quiet murmur is heard from the violent surface. Life continues to thrive deep inside, indifferent to what is happening outside.

This is another spiritual death… and like the last time, I know I’ll live again as a new person.

What do I feel?

Change.

You can kiss the old me goodbye.