Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's Note: Alejandro is my favorite in doing some mental exercises as we muse on what life without feeling is like, as much as is possible for someone who does.
After the accident, everything had changed. Undergoing months of surgery and much pain, when it was done I felt exhausted. This was a normal response in some people and after giving me some medication should I feel depressed, I was released back into my family's care with the certainty that everything would return to normal.
It wasn't long however before something felt off. Everything seemed normal in and of itself yet my mind said there was something odd going on. It took me another week or two to finally realize what it was when I stopped to think about it. What was wrong was the whole feeling of perception. My perception of everything became rather flat and I could no longer care about anything. I need to make something clear however. I am not depressed, suicidal, or even indifferent although that one is much closer to the status of myself than the other two. I do not cry, burst into tears, or even bring myself to feel sad, no matter how hard I try. I've done everything from watching sad movies, insulting and hurting people, even occasional slicing open what were most likely someone's stray pets in order to feel a little something but I have felt absolutely nothing. The movies do nothing but make me think that either the people acting or the people watching or both are extremely stupid and nonsensical. They clearly made all sorts of wrong choices. I gain no pleasure in hurting others, but no guilt either. Even as I watch tears form in their eyes or rage as they get angry, I do not feel any different uttering those words. I could have talked about the weather in the same tone for all the words felt to me, just mere sounds. I know and can see that others feel a reaction, I even remember having similar reactive ability before, but now I cannot. I would say this is the worst part but I can't because that would be a lie. In my state of existence, the nature of better and worse has been extinguished. I have the concept of it in my head but I can no longer have it in practice. I just use words to try to make this understandable to others who may one day find this.
I have killed those five stray animals and once even someone's pet while they were out of town for the attempted possibility to see if I could feel something in my now empty world. Like bullying and insulting people however, I felt absolutely nothing in the process. Words were just words and actions just actions. It did leave an awful mess and smell however that I had to cover up and I left the remains buried off in the woods. I have since given up on this avenue of pursuit and have accepted the fact that my capability to feel the sensations associated with those feelings commonly called emotions has since been severed. I do however have a limited ability in other senses like sight and smell, particularly in the case of the dead animals, although smell no longer has emotional arousal for me. I have perfect balance and intuition and touch but senses of pain and feeling are particularly affected, and it takes a lot for me to even register the dullest sensation of pain in my head. To illustrate what has changed imagine a snow-cone. This snow-cone is some sort of flavor, grape for example. I remember grape being one of my favorite flavors although now, I cannot see it because it has the same affect for me as all others and are interchangeable. Nonetheless, this snow-cone is grape, a uniquely different flavor from say strawberry, orange, blueberry, etc. One licks at the cone and all the flavor is pulled out and absorbed and what is left is just ice. That is what we all are at when everything is removed, mere physical body. The flavor has been removed from me and all that has been left behind is ice. Although maybe this description is not accurate at all, I don't know. It is hard to think of examples to qualify just what is different from other people even though it is obvious and even I understand there is a major difference.
My family had noticed the difference from the start but had assumed just like the doctors that it was from the trauma and shock incurred by my many injuries. I had been lucky to even still be alive after all. However, after a few months they realized that things weren't getting better and that I wasn't acting like my old self or showing any interest in the things I used to like. This was out of the ordinary and they thought I was depressed or something and tried to make me talk about it to a counselor. I tried to explain that I wasn't depressed, I just felt nothing but they insisted I go so I did because I couldn't be bothered to fight to not go. It was okay I guess, if one's definition of that being things going smoothly and quickly. I was quite complacent and when she asked me questions, I truthfully answered them all to the best of my ability although questions of what I was feeling always tripped me since I wasn't sure whether to say indifferent to everything or pretending to feel as the therapist expected me to would. I ended up doing both and confused the poor woman and she was fairly certain I was hiding something. She was right of course, I did not tell her about the animals because that would be a major sign that could be taken the wrong way for sure although I did tell her about yelling at people to try to feel something. She came to the conclusion that I was depressed as well and forced me onto depression medication which of course did absolutely nothing other than make me physically ill. As I said, I am not depressed and if I could feel depressed, I would say those drugs would make me depressed. It certainly interfered with my mental functioning in intolerable ways so I convinced my parents to let me off as I was not depressed and needed my intellect fully functional. I refuse to be a mindless zombie in addition to being emotionally dead.
I was taken to special neuroscientists to take a look at my brain. It finally occurred that if what I am is not depressed or psychological, then the cause must be physical. I don't know how this obvious conclusion escaped us all since I had suffered major physical damage in the aftermath of that eruption but it finally became clear and I was whisked to see the best brain doctors we could get. When they scanned my brain, they immediately saw something off and had me take another closer scan. Something to do with the neural brain pathways to such and such a part had been damaged somehow, probably while being trampled upon the ground would be my guess. So my amygdala and other emotional control centers of the brain had been disconnected or damaged yet my logical reasoning skills remained intact which explains why I can even still think although have no sensations of emotional feeling. My mind has been contented with this information and all is good. My parents, Carlos, and even my brother Jose cried yet I of course felt nothing but reasonable wonder of why they would cry when I was the one that was affected by this. My memories speak of something called family which used to mean something emotional but not now. I also realized that of course I cannot cry over my condition because I no longer have the capacity so it is little wonder my family does it for me. They keep saying things like 'it will all be all right' and 'it will get better soon' and other such platitudes although I keep quiet. Of course it will be all right, everything is just fine to me and if anything better than before. Now I do not have to have those pesky emotions and states play with me or have anything to keep me from achieving potential. I just let them have their say because they are the ones who need it and I want them to achieve a happy state again, so they could find focus in their own lives as well as to stop butting into mine.
Jose is nicer to me than I can recollect in any of my memories. Probably because he feels guilt or remorse or some such, obviously to me now, useless sentiments like that. It is good but it doesn't really matter to me one way or the either. It does to him however, something about 'making things up to me'. So I let him even though I have already rationally forgiven him a while ago. I do appreciate the fact that he is no longer trying to mess with me or my work like he did before because if he had, I would have been forced to do something about it. But I can take his teasing and his ribbing because a positive benefit to this is that it has become clear to me that it is all just words. Without the emotional storm that used to rule my life, I see things in perfect clarity. If one does not wish to be affected by words, it is best not to listen or ruminate on them because that is all they are. I let myself be bothered by them but now without emotional bondage, I am free to realize they were nothing. He no longer teases me as much but I don't care. I have even given him permission to call me Al or whatever ridiculous name he could come up with all he wants but Jose is remembering what I said about him before my accident and doesn't. He is a good brother now.
Carlos doesn't like me much anymore. He avoids me as much as possible and when he thinks I'm not there or out of earshot, mutters and says things like that 'I'm creepy' or 'Alejandro is dead' or 'he never came back'. He was happy when I came back after my months of surgery but in the interval of time before it was known what my true affliction was, he had intuitively understood as had I that something was off and that who I was before no longer existed. The flavor had been sucked out of me leaving only ice with the memories of the person who was once Alejandro. That person had died and left me in his place. Logically, I am still him since I have his face, his body, his memories. Everything that was him was bequeathed to me, minus the parts that left with him. Yet I still cannot feel as if I am him and he is I. It is merely but a name and a reflection of myself. It of course no good to think on such manners of things yet I cannot help but do so. A remnant of that thing called humanity I assume that causes me to ruminate and try to figure out what it was that I had lost. I therefore cannot classify myself as human because if humanity is something that requires those bothersome, useless, yet powerful, inspirational, and transcendent sensations and feelings, I am not that. I am trying to find a name for that but as I've realized, words are just empty sounds that cannot encapsulate the true essence of the subject and could only but reflect the barest reflection and piece of it. I am not human but nobody is as humanity is just a word like any other. The difference is I am I and they are they and I and they have no connection to link us anymore. Carlos wants who I was back and sometimes I want that too, for the purpose to blend in and not be so cold and not me anymore. Journal, this is hard to explain. How can I want anything if I cannot feel? I have expressed many times that I cannot feel. Want is a feeling right? It is both a feeling and a more physical urge, probably made for survival. It would be much easier to blend in and stand out if I was my old self again and having emotions, although burdensome, do provide slight advantages. Also, I do remember what it was like to feel and although the memory of feeling is so much weaker and still cannot feel it, the form of it mere images, but some part of me remembers. Otherwise however, I do not want it and am relieved to know such feelings are dead because they lead to nothing but trouble.
It must be awkward for my family since I am dead and not dead. Who I was is dead and I am what was left behind and for them it must be like treating with a whole different other person. I can sense there is a part of them, even if they won't say it or even as they try to not consciously think it, that wishes I was dead, that they could bury me and move on. It would be much easier for them since then they could remember Alejandro as he was in his glory. I read his meticulous journals, thankful for my sense of foresight and duty to record to the truest details possible, and marvel at this fantastic person. He had big hopes and aspirations, dreams of all sorts. Dreams of fame and fortune and love, much like everyone yet so uniquely him at the same time. I remember dreaming these things but I dream no longer. As far as I know, I can no longer dream and never had one after the event. My brain just powers down and goes into sleep mode and all is black before some inner process turns it back on and I can think again. I sometimes toy with the idea of pulling my own plug out permanently, to sink into the black abyss but I don't. Nature dictates me to go on and although the thought of death does not, cannot, scare me like others, I have no logical reason to die. Why would I die for others, especially ones who don't match my intellectual capacity? There is no reason. I do believe however, or whatever it is in me that passes for believing since belief is beyond me, that I am not finished, that I have great work yet to do in this world. As Alejandro once said, "I am meant for great things and I do not surrender," I press forward. No surrender, no weakness, no hesitation to do the task I was created for. However my end shall come, I will be prepared for it, but until then, my work has to live on.
I am interning with my uncle Julio in the field concerning the processes of action and thought, psychology. He has understood partially why it is that I am interested in this area. He thinks that I want to research my condition and others like me which is partially true, but I also am undertaking the great task to understand what constitutes 'human' nature, for those who are and aren't like me. I sense this is what I was born for and why I had not died in the accident those two years ago. Or, not all of me at least. I realize that the old me must have had to be extinguished to prepare me for this. I understand, but also know old me would not have understood and would have hated it. He would have hated being chosen for this grand task and thought it pointless and stupid, that he knew all there was to know. I know much about the world but I have come to the conclusion that I do not know all there is to know and for my task I have to approach that as much as possible. Whether or not knowing the thought processes behind these pitiful mortal creatures is or isn't helpful is debatable, yet I have to know and persevere in this endeavor. I am going to leave my reflections in this journal so that one day someone would open it and hopefully understand where it is I am coming from. They might understand, they might not, they might even throw it to the fire and burn it but at least I will have a record. Whatever force that compels existence to exist also compels me to study it and try to preserve as much as possible.
Free will is an illusion. But before I continue, one has the capacity to change things and events are not entirely set in stone. The problem is in defining that word: Freedom. Words are meaningless but what is the concept of freedom? To be without restrictions? To have limited but powerful privileges and rights? To not be possessed by another person? To not bend to the whims of 'destiny' and act as if one has a choice in all circumstances? Any and all definitions have been used but if one takes the seemingly more common definition, the first one of without restrictions, freedom is truly illusory. It is impossible to entirely be without restrictions, at least of one's own will which would therefore inherently contradict with the doctrine of free will. All creatures are bound by the bodies they are born with, the abilities and gifts and intellect nature saw fit to give them. Choice is a misnomer in that such choices are limited to what's available and what one likes. Everything is born with a different taste and sense they cannot help but be attracted to. Flies and scavengers are attracted to dead rotting flesh, other animals avoid such meat once it reaches that point unless there is no choice. People like certain things yet can completely differ from each other on just what it is that they like. Take some who the taste of salmon pizza or throwing every absurd thing they can onto a sandwich, even if it makes no sense to others. It tastes good to them but they cannot choose the original fact it tastes good to them.
I do not deny the power of the mind over body however. In fact, I encourage it. One can change how they taste their food if they change their mindset enough. I recall the sensation of taste and it was more than the mere arrangement of taste sensors on the tongue but a state of mind. If one wills it, it can change to be different. I no longer have this ability since if tasting food requires differing states of minds and feelings, I can no longer do it. Most food tastes just the same to me now and is for the mere purpose of energy and survival now. Still, one does not control what one initially feels or the base patterns that get them going. And just how much of this is "free"?
For an idea that has more relevance to many is the idea of love. Love is a complex factor in the relationship of many species and could have many meanings from purely for reproductive and sexual purposes, to a transcendent glorious high that few ever achieve and one could not adequately describe with weak words such as these, even if they tried to. However, I mean to describe love as is commonly in vogue with this current culture: the idea that there is a person or persons that they find and will have intimacy with and be with forever. A silly, frivolous idea in my opinion as how one could expect continual intimacy and not get tired of it, but that is going off tangent and not something I need to or can have because I can no longer feel love anyways. I remember having it once, with that one girl, Heather. She visited me one time only, a year after the incident. She came only reluctantly and at my parents' request, in a blatant attempt to see if there was anything left of me but I don't mind. She came and I remember staring at her and feeling nothing, nothing whatsoever. Oh, her proportions are good and her features very fine, those breasts and lips I once wanted to kiss and ravage as I plunged inside her…but the physical reaction was quite lacking. She looked around the room, anywhere but at me, already feeling discomfort. I crossed over to her and forced her to look at me.
'Your eyes,' she murmured thinking I couldn't hear. 'They look different'. I knew they did, I had compared photographs from before and after and the difference is noticeable although not in inherent physical way. It wasn't damage to my eyes, all though there had been some, but the difference in what lay behind them. The expression "eyes are the window of the soul" is an apt description because whatever qualifies the soul, personality and feeling perhaps?, it was either different or gone and there is a different quality there. I heard it described as 'cold' and 'unfeeling', even 'robotic'. I suppose that is what I am, what everyone is without what they are, mere physical sacks of flesh programmed to certain actions. She felt disturbed and disgusted with my presence and left as soon as she made her condolences and apologies for what she did to me to my family, acting as if I wasn't even in the room. I suppose I wasn't. The person she needed to apologize to was already dead.
But I am off task, I was talking about love. One does not choose who they are going to love. They do not wake up one day and go 'oh, that is the person I'm going to hopefully spend the rest of my life with for all time'. Nobody in their right mind would ever think that, and probably nobody in the wrong frame of mind either for that matter. They don't even choose what it is their attracted to or what their physical body reacts to. It is well known the body reacts on its own without the consent of the mind when it senses something it wants. One does not choose to be attracted to those of the opposite or same gender or even both and do not nominally choose what it is that firsts attracts them. They do not pick the fact that they like blond or brunette hair, blue or brown eyes, fat/skinny/muscular, whatever body. Some are given bodies that are skinny that no matter what they eat it seems to do nothing, others gain muscle with no effort at all, some seem to get fat just breathing. In those respects, the body they are gifted with is their own and no one else's. They can change it, but the initial form is not chosen.
One is not free to choose their base nature. It isn't chosen by them whether to think cowardly, bravely, nicely, mean, capricious, or in my case, unable to feel sensations of emotion, and their environment shapes and molds such base natures. A person's options are limited by what there is and what they think there is. Being within an inset , ingrained paradigm at birth and molded by events in their life, can preclude certain options as better or worse or just not thought about as possibilities. There is a finite set of response range within creatures and only a finite set of outcomes. Within the paradigm, there is little choice but between outcomes one wants and doesn't want. As Rousseau once said "man is born free, but everywhere is in chains" although I must disagree with the free part of that statement. Nothing is born free and is dependent on either their progenitors or nature itself once it is born, but the second part itself is true. It Is one's base nature and thinking base that chain people to certain sets of opinion and thinking. It keeps from seeing the other options but short of intervention from without, there is nothing to ever suggest other options. A coward does not act bravely or a strong willed person subservient unless it is in their best interest or a change from without or both. There is much to be said for the advancement of human nature and thinking but it is very limited in many respects.
One cannot control everything which is the grand mistake of human design. I and others have made that mistake and all pay for it in some way. I received a double-edged gift to lose who I was before and others pay with other things: life, money, sanity, etc. Nature cannot go out of balance or it will strike back. However, there is a power in that changing thoughts change events. So in a way, Free Will does exist. It is a matter of the definition of the word free since if it is the commonly assumed meaning, it cannot be since one cannot dispel the influence of environment and causation of such factors. However, the belief in free will (which is not a choice either whether one can accept it or not for that matter) does seem to have a power where if one believes in it, their thoughts can seem to arrange things so that different things do happen. So is the ability to do things differently and causal determination incompatible approaches? They are not incompatible for the universe is not completely uniform which in causation it must be. There are certain hiccups, quirks, disturbances and ripples that can change an event. Nothing is 100% certain, very close, but not 100%. It is how causal determination and the concept of the ability to influence one's own choice in affecting things can be compatible at the same time and why although we mortals have no power to choose, can yet influence everything.
Julio is coming, I have to go now before he sees what I have been doing. It is silly but I don't want anyone to find my journal, not until my work is done or am near death and in need of an apprentice to carry it on. I suppose that I have a vestige remaining of jealousy to keep things of mine to myself, if only because it is mine. Still, one must carry on. Yes Julio, I hear you, I am coming! So for now, goodbye journal as I hide you in the secret compartment behind the bookcase where hopefully no one would find you. I hear we have a new subject today, one of particular interest to me as Julio tells me. I don't know. We shall see won't we?