Aria~Bird

I'm gonna just lay out some stuff before therapy that I might want to discuss to get my brain sorted.

My cat is circling the drain of old age at this point and my mother and I both know it won't be too long before we have to put him down. I imagine that moment will come and go like so many other "emotional occurences" and I won't really cry or feel it. This is a cat I've had for over 16 years now and I can't imagibe myself crying when he is gone. Isn't that wrong?

Within the last 2 or 3 years I've lost 2 of 3 grandfathers, both of whom were pleasant and meaningful people in my life. Yet their passing too just slipped past me. I think a healthier person in my shoes would have had a reaction to this. I can imagine this healthier me feeling the weight of the loss, and maybe not crying, but sitting with the sadness of it. Why do I not seem to care?

Twice now I've entered into a relationship with someone I truly care for, who guves me their love so strongly and so earnestly that I feel self-conscious that I don't feel things like they do. I love my girlfriend but I don't feel it in a way where I might express it loudly. She sends me cute little kisses online all the time, and I react the way I always react when recieving the fascimile of human contact; I sit there and let the other satisfy their need to express love physically. Internally I argue with myself 'A better girlfriend would send fake kisses back' 'A better girlfriend wouldn't think that was a lie'.

I have defense mechanism for these things of course. "I don't feel bad about my grandparenta paaaing because I didn't really know them that well." Or "I'm just more appreciative of the life they lived rather than the death they died". I just don't know if these defenses are true, or if they are a way to make me feel less broken. I worry that my "understated way of love" is some awful method of keeping a girlfriend like a trophy. I would never purposefully maintain a harmful relationship, but if my own brain is lying to me how do I even approach one?

My friends sometimes talk about hating being on SSRIs. I've been on anti-depressants for years now, and I can't tell anymore if I was like this when I was off them. What I can remember is the panic. I used to fear, and anxiously hide, when I felt even mildly perterbed. I know that at least the medicine seems to prevent that. The numbness though, that I can't control for. I've always been a little numb right? I mean who could grow up in the 2000s without being a little numb? Is it the SSRIs that broke me, was I broken from the start, or is it not me but the world around me that is broken?

These days when I think about stopping the SSRI medication I think about confronting a world full of terrifying conflict. People of color still don't get as much as they deserve. Radicalized people seek to exterminate queers. Giant corporations suck in all the cash they can manage while millions are homeless. All the while the earth grows hotter each year.

Maybe it's better to be numb.

I stumbled across this in my notes app just now and I feel like putting it somewhere public might help. I hope it resonates with someone out there.