To Feel Nothing or Everything At Once

Recently, I have been trying to pursue more of my hobbies again after being freed from the chains of working from the office (I got a new remote job!), one of them being art. I thought now, I would have more time to go back to the things I like. Other things I did was play more games, watch more anime and all that other cool stuff. Anyway, I enrolled myself in a digital art class to get myself less rusty, since I feel like before doing this art class, I was seriously losing the ability to draw from not drawing at all for such a long time, which is a shame because I do believe that I do have some potential in illustration at least. The art course I joined seems to be helping out a lot with that and it gets me out of the house by force lol since they do offline classes. Thankfully it’s still somewhat closeby to my place. Maybe 10 minutes by car if there’s not much traffic on the way? 

My art teacher is someone who always tries to get close to his students so we could always have topics to talk about, and while I was drawing a character, he mentioned that my art style and the character that I was drawing looks like typical 90s - early 2000s design. He mentioned some examples, which are Angel Beats and Clannad. Classics of the time. He asked me if I’ve watched them before, and if I cried while watching the sad scenes of the anime. I did watch them back then when I was younger, but I didn’t feel anything. To be fair, it really could just be because I was too young to understand the whole thing back then when I was younger so I felt nothing, but I think so far, the only two things that I’ve genuinely cried from is just Snape’s Death in Harry Potter and the ending of A Silent Voice / 声の形 (absolute must-watch). Some other things I’ve cried to, but it’s mostly just the art that made me feel so moved? Whenever I watch a Shinkai Makoto film, I usually tear up mostly at how beautiful the art is, and I am a huge fan of cityscapes so his work always moves me. However, I think the story is kinda ass most of the time, I just watch the movies for the artwork. 

My art teacher was bewildered that someone was able to not cry at all from Angel Beats or Clannad. He then asked me if I’ve ever cried from any movie before, so I told him I at least cried to A Silent Voice. He was pretty satisfied with the answer, but then he asked more questions, probably because he was just that shocked. He then continued to ask me if my emotions have always just been that muted, I explained to him, it probably has been like that ever since I was younger. He then proceeded to tell me that it’s really nice to be able to live a life where you won’t have to feel much - he also added details like, this way, people wouldn’t have to feel so stressed or pressured everyday in life since most of those things are really just in our heads. I told him I still do feel pressure and stress sometimes, though probably not as badly as most people do. It’s nice to have sometimes, but then I told him feeling no emotions doesn’t only remove the sad or bad emotions only, it also removes the good ones too. I told him how my graduation went, I graduated top of my class and all that, but I felt no sense of achievement at all. I was just mostly glad it was over or something? I didn’t even think I did that well, I was just doing what was asked of me and my only job as a student. “Isn’t a student supposed to be doing well in their studies?” is the mindset that I always had. He asked me if I felt the same way when I did well in games or something, I said yeah, I don’t really feel all that proud of my gameplay in any game.. I always think of myself as some mediocre player. He even asked me afterwards “then what’s the point of playing games then?”, I wanted to tell him really badly it’s that same line of thinking that made me think that there’s just no point in living as well since I don’t really feel proud of anything in my life either, but I don’t wanna traumadump on the guy and just told him it’s just fun and passes time faster. He also asked me how I feel when I hang out with friends. I had to tell him a story for this one because it’s a bit hard to describe without one. At the moment I am with friends, I am genuinely very happy. I would laugh a lot, pay attention to all of them, and even remember and bring up inside jokes and old memories. After the whole thing though, maybe I would feel fulfilled and complete, though it barely happens. Most of the time, I would be really neutral and if someone asks me how I felt at that point in time, I would say I was happy, but I can’t really recall the memories and feel warm inside or something. I just really see it as something that happened in the past and not a lot of emotions or attachments to it. 

I’ve never seen someone so confused yet so intrigued at the same time. It was at that moment I told him, yeah sometimes it’s nice to not be able to feel anything because you’re just chill and vibing most days, but it also takes away a lot of your ability to connect with people - that’s also when he asked me if I feel like I have any “best” friends. I think I can be quite close to people, but I can’t really feel all that close to them at the same time. I talk to a lot of people everyday, but I can’t really feel the “closeness” most of the time? I also mentioned this in my previous blog. Not sure why that’s a thing. So yeah, it does feel lonely a lot of the times, and I just really don’t feel anything on most of my days. Most people wish to feel nothing, but forget that you won’t feel all that joyful either. 

It’s kind of like a curse and a blessing at the same time. Most of the time, I feel like it’s more of a curse, though. It’s nice to also be not so influenced by emotions when you have to make important decisions, but man, it feels really lonely and it makes you feel very detached from the world and others around you. 

Don’t think there’s a fix to this other than therapy or medication for AuDHD. Sigh..