People used to tell me, all the time, that apathy was a bad thing. They'd look at me as if I were so different, just because I didn't care about what they viewed as important or normal.
To me, the order of importance in my life has always been what could be considered abnormal. Never having any control over myself or anything else, I indulged in the one thing I could control; the one thing that kept me sane inside my own insanity. I covered myself in missions and schematics, facts and solid evidence. I protected myself from the uncertain, blanketing my heart and soul with things that I viewed as necessity.
Though others perceived my personality as being closed off from the world, they had no idea that I had already experienced the things that they so wanted to learn about in the future. I had felt love, trust, caring, and compassion. I had looked into the eyes of death and not fallen to my knees. I had opened my eyes to true life and embraced uncertainty and hope. I was doing all of these things before they ever dreamed of them as possible. One of the main differences, though, is that all of my love was destroyed. All of my trust was misplaced. All of my caring was pointless, and my compassion futile.
I don't remember much of my past, age granting freedom from the horrible memories that occupy it. Everyone else had some shred of a good memory to keep them together and keep them striving for a new life and a new beginning. I only had dedication to the one thing I knew: control. I filled my mind with the mechanics of control, information and fact upon fact of how to manipulate others, and in return I lost some of the pain I had felt in my life, forgetting about most of it. Now, it's all I know. Only now, it's unimportant. It's not needed.
What happens to the ones who can no longer function in the one way they know how? What happens to the ones who have locked up their hearts and thrown away their souls? What happens to those who no longer have emotion, and who have become so comfortable with their own shortcomings, that instead of trying to change, they embrace it, wanting forever to feel the warm, all-encompassing notion that they are, wherever they may be, safe?
I suppose those people end up here. I suppose they end up like me; locked away in a square room with white everywhere and one bed. No change of clothes, no bathroom, no windows, no privacy. They end up caged like animals, watched through the grate and glass holes in their doors by doctors who say they know better. They get fed through the small opening in their door, a plastic tray covered in smelly but tasteless food, no utensils other than a small plastic spoon. Sometimes, if they're good, they are allowed to eat with the others, but they often don't want to. They prefer to be caged, these days, enjoying the silence and the feeling of isolation because they have become so accustomed to it.
This is who I have become. Sometimes I want to change what I have become. I want to change my very nature; the nature that I now refer to as intrinsic because I know no different. I no longer want to be caged. I want to be out of this room, out of this large building, and I want to see and experience the world that I know I am missing. Then I remember that I will still be alone, that I will still want to be alone, and that reminds me of the reasons that I now despise all humans to the point that I am almost willing to kill myself in order to rid the world of one more.
But the doctors always come back. The woman with the blonde hair leads the group and peers in through the grate and glass hole, nudging her thick-rimmed glasses higher up on her nose so that she is sure she is seeing me clearly. I know I look mad, my hair long and tangled and matted, my face unwashed and unclean, my bed upturned and bare mattress strewn to the other end of the room. And I sit in the corner, alone in my own world, blue eyes darting back and forth from my feet to her own blue eyes, still unsure as to whether or not I am supposed to look at them as they are watching me. They invade my world, the vermin. They come into my solitude and disrupt my train of thought far too often. I hate it. I hate them.
They keep me on schedule, though. Days and nights run together like liquid in this room with no windows and only one large light overhead. I don't sleep anymore. At night, I turn my thoughts off for a while, staring at the wall so that my brain can rest for a time. And later the hatred begins anew. This is the one reason I enjoy seeing the doctors come and peer into my door. They remind me that tomorrow I will be removed from my solitude and taken to an office that is not pure white. It has colors, shades of brown and blue and yellow. I will sit and talk to the doctor and he will ask me my name and I will not answer him because I no longer have a name. Solitude has lead to recognition of the fact that your name can define who you are, but not what you are. I am who I am and that is all that defines myself. No name can ever contain in itself the very essence that is my mind.
And the doctors leave and they grant me my solitude once more and I begin to stare at the wall ahead, blanketing myself in the comforting white nothingness. I pick at my clothes, the cotton pants that are to be washed only once a week because I will not allow them to be washed any other time. I despise the man-made scents that infest the cotton fabrics when they are washed, the flowery perfume that reminds me of females. And for a while, I remember the time in my life when I had, not friends, but companions. People who shared some of the same goals I had. I have long since left them behind, as they have done me. They probably gave up on me. Little do they know that I gave up on them; that I gave up the notion that they could ever keep up with my mind, which knows far too much and tells far too little.
I sometimes pull on my hair, the long thick strands that are weighed down with bodily grime. I sometimes braid small portions of it and hold it away from my eyes where I can stare at it and remember the same type of braid of a different color. And I can remember the green eyes. I can't remember the others very well, though I know there were two more. I can't help but feel that I am missing something when I try to remember them. And I remember how the one with the braid would come and see me, years ago, and tell me about all of the things that I had been missing. And I remember seeing the ring on his finger the last time, and I remember saying things to him. What I said to him, though, I am unsure, because I have forgotten. But I remember feeling something. What I felt, though, I am unsure, because I have forgotten. It was the last thing I ever remember feeling other than hate and sometimes I miss it. But not now. I don't miss it now, because I am comfortable being who I am, and I don't want to change.
For some reason, though, people used to tell me, all the time, that apathy was a bad thing. I can't understand why they said that, because I am happy and I don't want to change.