Mauerbauertraurigkeit - the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

(I might be able to relate with Stan a bit too much in that particular episode)

He thinks nobody really understands.

And Stan hates how that makes him sound, like some edgy teenager with a woe-is-me attitude who thinks the world owns them or something. Like he isn't even fucking trying.

Cause he is, trying so hard it hurts. But it doesn't fill the emptiness.

And seeing them only makes it worse, makes him feel somehow as if he is the one screwing things up. Like he just choose to wake up one morning and be this way.

So no, they don't understand.

For a while, they want to though. Stan wants them to as well, explains it over and over, to them and to his parents and to himself, when it gets a bit too much.

But how do you explain that you just don't care anymore? That something that was once there is now gone and you don't know where it went or how to get it back and maybe you don't care to.

And it doesn't even feel missing.

Not like something he lacks, but something that the world is now bereft of in his eyes. Some type of childish wonder or suspension of disbelief that whispered in his ear that, yeah sure things are screwed up, their town is fucking screwed up, and their lives are not the typical nine-year old experience. But it's ok like that.

Everything is ok.

Now it whispers that everything is screwed up still but that it's not ok. It's not okay at all, it's fucking horrible but there's nothing Stan can do to fix things.

And nobody understands.

He didn't expect Cartman to anyway. He hoped maybe Kyle would, after all.

Or Kenny, who is just a little bit screwed himself.

But in the end they care about stuff and Stan doesn't anymore and that's just the way things are.

So he stopped explaining, tired beyond his age in ways unimaginable and they still came by but he didn't open the door. Pushed at them and himself more than he could take.

Nurtured the glass of bottles stolen from his father's cupboard and no matter how many he took Randy always supplied new ones so it didn't matter either. Taste bitter, but at least it made the not caring a little bit less sad.

Then they stopped visiting, probably happy without him, and Stan still didn't open the door because it didn't matter and he didn't care and everything hurt.

Until he didn't even feel that anymore, dull and absent and maybe it was better or maybe so much worse. The jury is still out on that one.

But he knows nobody will understand.

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