I have too many emotions. It's not that I think I have more than other people, or that mine are stronger, although in a lot of cases this is true. Truth be told, I really don't know what anyone else feels, nor do I particularly care if the emotional bouillabaisse I routinely find myself in is commonplace. I only know that I dislike it. It wearies me, and more and more I find myself wishing that I could turn a switch and stop the incessant flow of emotions that churn within, so that i may pass through life as indifferent and dispassionate as so many others.
Ordinarily I would find a statement such as this alarming. After all, a hallmark of sociopaths is that they are devoid of emotion. But the vast and relentless current of feelings I am subjected to day in and day out is slowly eroding me, and it hurts. It isn't that I wish to stop feeling altogether, but to be able to stop some would be heavenly. I feel as if there are tiny fissures all about me, leeching emotional ooze at every turn like radioactive waste, polluting everything. I simply cannot contain them all, and there seems to be nothing that I can do to stop it. I want so much to not care, to blithely ignore, to forget, to sail through life unruffled and undisturbed by the human condition. Placid. Serene. Not bouncing back and forth between vexed, bored, lonely, irate, sad, chagrined, and concerned, all within the same hour. (And that is just one example).
How glorious it would be to just not care-about a job well done (which produces stress, vexation, resentment, although occasionally it does produce satisfaction), the past (which produces regret, sorrow, longing and a dash of shame), the future (worry, worry and more worry), in short, any myriad number of things and people. How delightful it would be to never again experience the hand-clenching, gut wrenching, blood pounding jealousy that lurks like a tightly coiled viper deep within the recesses of my heart that strikes unexpectedly and as viciously as it ever did. I should not care, I hate that I care, when clearly so many people don't. It is an exercise in futility. But that seems to be my lot in life, to care about people and things disproportionately to their significance and/or worth.
And it would be nice, if just once, I could cry prettily, instead of with great heaving sobs that comically cause my dog to raise his head in alarm, and which leave me looking like a trainee clown who has failed her final in make-up application.
