Anxious Nonchalance

Personally, it is quite a difficult feat to get my feelings across properly as well. A friend last night said that he is "emotionally constipated", something he very nonchalantly agreed and accepted about himself. The sentence didn't have an effect as dousing one in cold water as many usually put dramatically but I for me, I sat up wide awake. 

Yesterday I had a pretty long day, keeping up commitments with society, friends, family and a bit uncompromisingly, with my own self as well. I thought, I'd go to sleep and that'll be the end of it but I decided to read through the texts pending on my cell and wala, my sleepy daze was cleared with a breath of fresh wind. 

Something that I'd want to achieve. 

I am known to be someone who is detached regardless of how moving the situation is. I didn't shed a single tear on my farewell ceremony in either of my schools and I looked pretty happy in the pictures from back then. I don't budge when my family gets into an heated argument and I am made to join in, I come back to my room to cry. The core of my existence hasn't changed but something has, something, that I quite often cannot put my finger to point at.

I used to cry a lot as a kid. I was late for assembly in my second grade and one of the captains (who's face I don't remember owing to my teary eyes) sneaked me inside the classroom and asked me to wait it out, saving me a 'late note' from the coordinator. 

Stupid me from then started to howl as soon as the bell rang for lunch and the teacher found out from me that I didn't attend the morning assembly. She didn't make a big deal out of it either, which would sum off to 'cutting me some slack' since I truthfully owned up. But a part of me at this date felt that I let that captain, who's face I don't quite remember, out and made her efforts go to waste. 

I was honest to a fault and felt a bit too much. 

I wanted to change as soon as possible. 

But something that I don't remember my younger self doing in the past is wanting to grow up. What I remember is me crying late hours into the night with the fear of inevitable death and the loss of people close to me and the terror of me continuing my life without the faces I am familiar with. Now when I write it even after so many years, I can feel my chest tightening but I am not crying.

I was barely five when I cried to my grandmother when I dreamt of her dying but I never mustered up my strength to say that I dreamt of death. I cried and cried and she didn't ask me twice for a reason. Years later she passed away and I cried all over again and this time from actual loss but she didn't embrace me like that when I was a mere child. 

I still get anxious every time she is mentioned in the house and I wish I could cry but I don't find it in me to boldly drop even a single drop of tear. I tremble in anguish in the solitary confinement of my room while my mother says that I feel too little but owning the fact that I do feel so much feels almost embarrassing at this point.

Things like this keeps happening, I'm indifferent and aloof but I couldn't make myself own up to my friend that I'm similar. There is so much more to that just 'constipated' for me. 

I hear my parents shout at each other downstairs, anecdotes from their past, the wrongs which they cannot forgive each other and themselves are brought up. It gets nastier every time somebody opens their mouth. My younger brother not being able to take it, calls me downstairs and I say my part and end up leaving the room. I hurt them enough and it is cooled enough but the coldness remains until one of them show each other a gesture of pure love. They care for each other, so much so that a little scratch can feel like a fatal wound. 

In the midst of it, I am called inhumane for my conduct. I decided to leave the room early and didn't wish to get involved. Honestly, I am better that way. 

And they surely did not need to know that I came back to my room to actually complain and write this. The way my life is now is fine as it is. It is unloading and impersonal even though associations are troublesome, I'm blessed to have been associated with certain people in my life. 

I've decided to stay indifferent. They don't need to know that either.