Monday, August 18, 2008

Lucid

My brain's been a lucid mush for the past couple days. I guess that's an odd way of saying it. It's just that sometimes I have those moments where everything going on in there is nothing but clarity but I feel like I'm floating around in a bubble detatched from everything.

It's the sort of feeling that lends itself well to me writing a post that tries ineffectively to explain what it feels like, but it's also the sort of thing that lends itself well to me writing a post that's filled with things I hesitate to let anyone read.

But I've been bouncing around a lot of thoughts lately.

I can't remember when it was that my father said that he'd never seen me show my mom any sort of affection. I thought about it for some time and then I never bothered to tell him that I agreed with him.

It's something that has never ever come naturally to me. I had to teach myself to show it because apparently thinking it is just not enough.

I've always felt kind of socially retarded that way, like I'm always slow to pick up on how I'm supposed to act. I watch people; I have a habit of picking them apart, their motivations, their reasoning, their appearance and habits. Yet, in the end, I still fumble through things, still come across as awkward, still feel like I'm just going through the motions that I learned from a manual or something.

I can't help thinking that I lack compassion and empathy. I have strong morals and convictions and I'm inclined on most days to believe in the goodness of people, but do I feel for them? No. I'm beginning to think I'm not capapble of it. I'm too rational for that.

It's for that reason I'm usually at a loss as to how to deal with things like weddings, births, deaths and the like. I find myself reciting from scripts that are backed with very little real conviction and I feel like shit for it because shouldn't I think your baby photos are cute or feel waves of sympathy and caring because your mother died? Maybe I should, but most of the time I don't. I don't like being confronted with these things because they remind me of my complete inability to be a normal human being.

I've been thinking of the accident on the cusp of this year, replaying the sounds, the sights, the smells of the impact, floating through the path my body took against it's restraints as the van spun around and both vehicles were totaled.

I floated through that too. I wasn't scared at all. I was tense for part of it, and afterward I shook a bit, but that's more physiological shock than anything.

And afterward when everyone was crying, claiming injuries against the insurance and writing wills, suddenly reminded of their own mortality I'm strangely unaffected by the whole thing. It's just another thing to mull over in the detatched way I approach everything.

I've been having chemotherapy dreams again. They come around in a series once in a while. In them I always vomit, feel a lot of pain and lose my hair. After the initial shock of diagnosis, though, I'm calm. They end with me in a hospital bed, sometimes writing a letter, but feeling nothing.

Maybe there's something to them. If there is then I don't feel like telling. They're just dreams.

And I know that if I give it enough time my mood will eventually lift itself. My social ineptitude will remain, but I'll be more positive about it. Even that has become a mundane routine.

I see people and I want to run my hands through their hair.