Special Blank

They delivered the news:

He’s the opposite of alive

They looked at me with sympathy

Some empathy

Their eyes filled with misery and feeling

My mouth hanging in shock

I’ve being told so many times of this moment

Loss

The denial, anger, grief

I never knew how it would feel

I waited. It did not come.

I waited. It did not come.

I could believe it. I was not angry. I was not sad. I was just there processing the information. The person in front of the television nodding her head in sympathy at another loss broadcasted. No. I am convincing myself that. This is not a lie: I felt nothing. No sense of emptiness. No satisfaction. Nothing. I felt quite the same as I do everyday except that day I had the knowledge.

Other things made me upset. Denial. Anger. Depression. I’d hold by breath till I turned blue hoping to escape. Not death. Just not in this current life. Just somewhere else where it was easy. But not with that news. I felt blank. I did not take the feeling of feeling nothing as something negative. I felt…special. Perhaps I was the only one in this lifetime capable of feeling neither content nor unhappy. I liked that. It built me up. I could do anything with that feeling. On the outside, I acted on what they expected of me. I used this to my advantage. An excuse. No longer did I feel the need to suffocate myself just to escape. Inside, I was happier. And as time progressed, I was allowed to show my progression of happiness on the outside. In fact, I was happier than ever. Really. Truly. My warped sense of happiness did no derive from love from another but from myself. It was all due to the knowledge that I was indeed different, I was capable of that medium. And nobody else was.

I met someone soon after. And I told him. Because I trusted him. He seemed special; not on the same level as I was. He peered at me and I expected him to be shocked. He said:

“It’s okay to not love someone you are expected to love.” The feeling arose again-the one where I had to hold my breath so it would go away. He told me that he had felt that way before. Exactly. I had problem breathing. I did not want to look at him anymore.

I was depressed and this time, I could not convince myself otherwise.