Apathy
Context
I want to talk about my own experience with apathy, starting with the current context and why it's something I'm bringing up this week, but before I start I want to note that this isn't a new thing for me.
I've covered in older blog posts regarding my story that I used to be a very angry child/teenager. Then at the age of 15/16 I was admitted into an in-patient facility and upon my release / graduation I decided that I, nearly word for word "didn't want to be the kind of person that got this angry.".
Since then, I just don't get emotional about things. It's very hard for me to get worked up about anything and it's been more than a year since I've lost control of my emotions in any meaningful way.
Generally by "control" I mean that I have to choose to let an emotion happen as a "is this a safe emotion to have" process that can be very automatic. If it's an emotion I'm unfamiliar with or that I'm not sure why I'm having, I almost always default to "No, that's unsafe" and trying to "force" it just distracts from the actual emotional trigger.
That of course means I spend most of my time in a very apathetic state. Lacking a lot of the emotional motivators for things and finding it hard to relate to people who, by comparison, get "easily" worked up by every day events like games, bad drivers, or not being understood. I can understand the causes for feeling a specific way, but someone actually letting themself feel that way to the extent that it hinders them often frustrates me.
Note: I understand that it is not that simple, but I often run into this issue with my brother and frustrates me enough in the moment that I'll say that without thinking.
This Week
So back to why it's relevant now.
I was supposed to post earlier this week about my rings and why I wear them, but a few days before I was going to sit down to write it I lost the most important ring that I wore for my best friend.
I didn't really know how to feel about it, so it was hard to write about the idea as a whole while working through why that was. Like, I had an idea of how I wanted to feel and the importance I'd been placing into it, but if anything I just felt ever so slightly more empty.
This will end up being part of the planned post on my rings!
Then the US Election happened and my thoughts about what I should be feeling took a whole new different angle. I didn't (and still don't) seem to have the same reaction as everyone else. I just can't bring myself to be anything more extreme than... disappointed(??) in the results and the future. Despite being involved in how terrible of an outcome it could be and having been following a lot of it over the past few years, I've just been holding the mantra "Whatever happens, happens, I'll do my best to respond to it...".
Between that passive outlook and my apparent lackluster reaction to loosing something I treasured, I feel wrong.
I've been trying to work through this problem for awhile, especially since coming out as transgender, because it often makes me feel broken and uncertain if I'm doing the right thing. More generally, it makes it hard to stay motivated to do the "right things" because there's no persistance in my interest, fears, or anger.
Where I am now
That feeling, both the apathy and feeling wrong for being apathetic, isn't new and it's been messy trying to find a balance between the extremes.
I'm not emotionless, despite how some of this may be worded, and I've been trying to put focus on the things that make me feel things, even if the feelings are uncomfortable, while trying to avoid the things that I know cause me to want to shut down. Even more, I've been making an effort to fixate my interests into my environment and habits instead of just, expecting it to happen.
I've known since I initially "decided" to not be angry that I'm afraid of my anger, and by extension I'm hesitant to feel the extremes of any emotion because of how often they all led me down a path that put me into the hospital.
I hurt myself and my family when I got angry, but it wasn't just anger that would lead to "episodes" of aggression and hospital visits. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, or Manic Depression when I was a teenager because of how extreme my mood changes would be and how often they'd go from me being "on top of the world" to wanting to kill everyone and everything.
Even before I turned 16 I had to learn to watch myself when I got "too happy" or "too motivated" because those are easy signs of a manic episode. At the very least those feelings would lead to me neglecting some aspect of self care that would trigger it, like sleeping, eating, drinking water, or taking my meds. So my fear of being angry and aggressive very easily expanded to a constant watch over my mood so that I wouldn't "trigger" the potential for a manic episode.
Being afraid of yourself is not the best coping mechanism, but it's something I'm trying to learn to balance. I don't think I will, or should, forget the harm I caused myself and others, especially since I'm still capable of it. So it's not an easy thing to embrace what I still feel could lead to more damage. I want to though.
I miss being excited about things for days, so much that it's the first thing on my mind when I wake up, and feeling like I'm floating when I get to work on it.
Summary
That was way longer than I intended tbh. I realized while writing this that my upcoming birthday will be the 10 year anniversary of my leaving in-patient care, which was a turning point for me in a lot of ways. Despite being hospitalized for mental health over 20 times in the 3 years prior, it's only happened once since then. I think I'll need to make a dedicated blog post about that tbh.
I have so much more to say on this topic (like always...), so there may be another post #soon, but for now I wanted to hit the key points again.
Despite trying to get more involved in things by coming out, making my environment mine, and understanding the situations that effect me, I still don't feel things easily or get "swept away" by my emotions. I want to, and I've been using my Trinkets™ to make sure that I carry what matters to me into every day. Yet again, I don't feel as much as I'd like when a part of that is lost.
I know that I'm afraid of my extremes, and it's really hard to override my automatic reactions to my emotions without killing the emotion itself, but it's a process. Trying is at the very least the first step, and I'm trying????