Apathy

I can’t even cry any more. Driving home last night – an hour of wheels on pavement, where it was just me and interstate 84 – I dug through my collection of music for songs that are guaranteed to kick start my tears. But even the tried and true ones weren’t working. Nothing could make me cry, like I needed. I tried to force it, I tried to think of everything on my mind with great seriousness and focus, sure that that would be the only sure-fire way to make tears fall. But still, nothing. I’m just cried out.

Do you know what I feel like right now? I feel like I’ve been beat up. And every time I try to get back up again, I get another punch to the face, another kick to the stomach. It’s been so steady and so long, I’ve just gone numb. I don’t have any tears to cry anymore, no matter how badly I want them to fall.

The biopsy I had two weeks ago confirmed what I’d feared – It wasn’t just a weird pap test. Two of the three areas that were abnormal tested for low-level pre-cancer. Next week, I’ll be going under general anesthesia again to rid my cervix of the pre-cancerous (or cancerous? I don’t know) cells that have found a home there. Is it the worst news in the world? No. But does it still suck? Of course it does. My pre-op packet is sitting in my purse, ominous and foreboding, reminding me that every goddamn time I go to the doctor, I leave with more heavy news.

Adding my actual health issues to other things rolling around in my mind, I get on the Why Me kick. Why did I grow cysts big enough to require incisions? Why do I, at twenty five years old, have to deal with even the idea of pre cancer? Why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over again? Why didn't I learn from my past? Why is all of this - some things that you, dear reader, know about, some you do not - happening to me?...

And I run with that until I have no more questions, until I'm all but exhausted from playing the martyr. It makes me feel tired, burdened.

And, the worst part, it's made me indifferent. I don't even care anymore. I can't even work up enough gusto to be scared or worried about my second procedure in as many months that will require I be unconscious. The other things on my mind, the things I'm not yet willing to talk about? They should be inspiring waves of emotion from me - Tsunamis of tears. But they're not. I'm just numb. I'm going cold. I feel it in my limbs, I hear it in my voice, and when I look into the mirror, I see it in my own eyes.

Even sitting here right now, writing this, I should be crying. I should. Because I'm thinking very hard about what's going through my mind, trying to get it out of me and into Blogger. It's always worked in the past...But not now. I just don't have it in me. Tears for myself, tears for other people...There's just nothing there.

And now, to boot, I can't even write. In the past two days, on the rare occasion that Blogger cooperated with me and let me in, I scrapped draft after draft, because nothing was right. Which is sort of the way my life is going these days. So I apologize for my absence. Hopefully, very shortly, I'll be back to normal.