Heartless

Introduction

I've always known that there was something wrong with me. Even when I a was a little girl at the ripe age of five, I was terrified of asking the nice kindergarten teacher to use the restroom. Instead, I just let myself suffer, because anything was better than talking to an adult. Even then, I knew that wasn't normal.

When I was between the ages of six to thirteen, things were still bad. I had a hard time making friends, especially at the snooty little school that I went to. It wasn't like I didn't want to make friends with people... well, maybe I didn't. But there were two reasons. First of all, I've always had a hard time connecting with people and expressing my emotions. Second of all, they were just straight-up unlikeable. It was basically Mean Girls personified.

So when I realized that I had anxiety at the age of fourteen in an extremely uncomfortable way, I was both relieved and horrified. I finally pinpointed a name for the majority of my emotions. It explained why it became so hard to breathe when I thought about certain events, or when I freaked out over saying "You too!" when I was at the mall and the sales lady told me to have a great day shopping. I thought about it the rest of the way home.

But it still didn't explain a few of my emotions. It didn't tell me why I couldn't comfort my mother over the loss of my grandmother, or why I couldn't say anything when she told me about the school shooting in some far-off city. It didn't tell me why people at my school thought that I was better than them, even when I felt so much worse.

I wouldn't call myself heartless. I truly wouldn't, because I know that a lot of people don't feel sad when someone dies, unless it was a personal connection. We're just desensitized to it.

I think that at the very end of it all, each of us have a basic truth about ourselves. For some, it's that they've done absolutely nothing with their lives. For others, it's that they cared too much about what society thought about them. And for me? It's that I can't express basic human emotions to others as well as others can, as much as I have been expected to my whole life.