Sometimes I feel like I’m an unfeeling emotionless jerk with a heart of black, cold stone. Other times I get caught out by the smallest of tragic tragedies and I’m a mess. When the aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon I didn’t shed a tear. Not a single celebrity death has made me sad – at least no sadder than if I, for example, stood in a puddle in new shoes. Yet I once saw a small child drop an ice cream on the floor before the first lick. That tugged my heart strings. I once saw a woman trying to scrape together enough change from in her purse to buy a pint of milk. That thawed the glacial lump in my chest; especially when she looked about part mortified, part imploring. I didn’t offer her the money she needed as she was embarrassed enough.
Tom makes me sad as often as he makes me happy. Something he said once which I have mentioned before about us not living together yet living in each other’s hearts. When we spend time together and I see how much he is growing and how little influence I have upon him.
My Dad dying affected me very little. I was saddened by the realisation that I wasn’t sad, if you get my meaning; that our relationship meant so little to me that I couldn’t mourn his passing.
Clare’s death ruined me for time eternal. I’ll never get over her.
I feel like I don’t feel enough, but then when I do feel it is too much. Most of the time I keep my feelings protected in a box inside another box inside another box inside another. But sometimes something gets through the boxes; penetrates the defences. It’s never usually much. It’s an advert for Cancer Research, an image of two people holding each other. It’s loss, grief, pain, injustice.
It’s a written word, a spoken thought, a painful memory.
Sometimes I feel like I’m an unfeeling emotionless jerk with a heart of black, cold stone and other times I get caught out by the smallest of tragic tragedies.
