So I Have A Condition . . .

Since this blog, ideally, is going to be sort of an online journal where certain ideas and my own personal train of thoughts would be exposed to the public, I might as well put a disclosure before anything else.

“Who are you, sufferer, that speak the truth to one who suffers?”

Io to Prometheus
(Aeschylus)

My name is Dann.  I’m nineteen, and I don’t miss people.

I realized this when my older sister spent four years away for college.  At that time, she was the one whom I considered emotionally closest to me.  So when she left and I didn’t feel anything different, I wondered if I ever felt as close to her as I thought. 

Next was when my mom went away to work abroad.  She didn’t want to take the job at first, and it was me who convinced her it would be a great opportunity for her—both career-wise and health-wise, since I was very well aware how difficult it was to deal with our family.  It cost every one of us our mental and physical health, but my mom most of all.  But in the whole two years she was away, I had the same feeling when my sister left: none.

I’m not bitter or misanthropic.  It’s not like I don’t love my family.  I just don’t really notice much deterioration in my emotional state whenever they’re not with me.

I worry about them—their safety, their health, how sad they must be whenever they miss people and I’m not there to comfort them.  Even though I was the one who pushed my mom to take the job, it was also me who insisted she come back home and not sign another contract with her company even though she was planning to do so, because her health was really declining and I realized how much it upsets her being away from us.

I want them to be happy, and I care about them more than anyone I know.  But it has never bothered me whenever they’re not around.

I know this can be easily misunderstood by most people, and it bothered me how upset my loved ones were going to be if they ever found out and think I don’t love them.  That’s why I brought this “condition” up when I talked to my campus psychologist, and it helped a lot.

She told me there was nothing wrong with me.  Although uncommon, it was something few people do experience.  She said it was because we find it easy to rationalize emotionally upsetting situations in order to clear our minds from the worrying and anxiety that we deem unnecessary, since we couldn’t do anything about it.

This also explains why I sometimes seem cold or insensitive.  It’s because all my life I only choose which reactions I am going to portray based on the emotions I can identify from the person in expecting a reaction.  The problem is that I also find it difficult sometimes to identify emotions, that’s why at those moments I would seem slow or unresponsive.  One of my friends actually use the term “brain fart” whenever that happens.  They’ve just gotten used to me going blank often and on random moments, I guess.

So my psychologist suggested another appointment with me.  To work on my emotional intelligence, I don’t know.  But since my general goal in social situations is to “act natural” and to seem as normal as possible to attract less attention (more attention means more explanation, means more time wasted that could have been used to more important things.  No offense), I decided getting sessions on How To Human from the campus psychologist wasn’t the worst idea there was.