I’m deteriorating—there’s no denying it—mentally, emotionally, academically, physically, even fiscally, if you could say so for a student who is still entirely financially dependent on his parent(s). I was never truly clear about my circumstances in the thread that has since been lost to the technological void, so perhaps I can elucidate what I never did then. In order to continue living, I’ve been forced to abandon, in part, some of my most effective coping mechanisms, namely unmitigated self-isolation to the extent that no action of mine is ever done without intense consideration of all its implications and consequences. If there were ever a spontaneous or whimsical facet of myself, it has long since been repressed to the point of being unsalvageable. In social situations, I do not react within reasonable time spans unless I exert myself, and even then the only reactions I allow myself to have are the kind that are expected of me. After a while, it reached the point that I did not even feel the urge to react at all; it has become exhausting to even maintain a conversation or contort my face into the few expressions it is capable of. Invariably, by the time I am opening my mouth to voice a reply, I have already considered all that I might say, and most of what could probably be said back by that person, unless it is a conversation consisting entirely of the exchange of information. As a result, I have a slight tendency to stop talking in the middle of a sentence, or offer no signal of any kind by way of verbal or nonverbal response. There have been moments when I simply “talk” to others in my mind; through simulating a person’s idiosyncratic dialect patterns and having a thorough enough understanding of how they interact, it is almost trivial to convince myself that I am indeed engaging in a conversation with anyone in particular that I’m reasonably close to. In fact, due to the nature of my memory (which I will explore later), I sometimes let slip references to conversations that never took place in my very real encounters with those people. Reining in that tangent, I would like to draw attention to what I said earlier about abandoning my coping mechanisms. I’m not a very empathetic person, of that I am certain. Consider, for example, my presence on this site. My lack of activity in other threads over this past year speaks to an undeniable truth: I do not help people. I provide little in the way of practical advice and proffer even less in the form of profound observations. Nor have I found myself able to respond with the meaningless assurances that some people on this site seem to expect and with which they are even ostensibly satisfied or placated. More often than not, my posts are longer than they have any right to be; I could not confidently claim that anything of genuine value is gained from reading them, nor that the energy expended in doing so is ever adequately rewarded. Of the hundreds of posts I’ve read over the months in EC, the majority have originated in the various support sections, primarily the General and Anonymous ones. There have been times when I’ve scoured the pages with an almost feverish intensity, pouring over with an unconquerable persistence the myriad concerns that plague our fellow residents of this website until I inevitably come to the conclusion that my own thoughts would not be reflected here. On multiple occasions, I have begun writing what might have been a response to a thread, only to disregard it midway through and relegate it to my ever-growing array of unsent messages and miscellaneous musings. Throughout my life beyond the virtual visage, much of the same sort of unspecified apathy can be found; to an extent, I think, it has become a fundamental component of my social self-preservation. I could delve further into its manifestations, but the more immediate concern is that I relinquished some of that mindset (or state of being, if you would) in order to convince myself to “care” that my sister will soon be in the same transitory stage in which I will find myself and that regardless of her own composure, my parents are both feeble enough to derail yet another life in their own futile attempts to reconcile with their own inadequacy and vulnerabilities. That train of thought can only postpone the inevitable, and certainly cannot sufficiently sustain me. On the topic of memory, it is possible that I suffer from a form of amnesia. I have not concerned myself with the specifics of such a diagnosis, choosing instead to accept the limitations as what they are, but they have played an undeniable role in my current state of affairs. Any recollection of my childhood resides in a chasm from which nothing but my worst early memories can escape through either conscious or unconscious effort. Despite being classified by most adults who knew me when I was younger as being a “very happy child” who was seldom upset and rarely cried, I have not been able to call upon even the most inanely positive of memories from my life before the age of around twelve years old. That in itself might not be particularly insightful or uncommon, if not for the fact that even considering the five years following that point in my life, it is as though my memories are shrouded by smoke, leaving only inchoate fragments of what others, including my twin sister, can call to mind with relative ease. Most of the time, any images I try to conjure of something from the past is replaced by adjectival words and phrases that I had assigned to those things at some point, rather than the object itself. I do not see faces, rather, descriptions of faces, cannot see events unfolding in my mind—only summon chronicles and summaries that cover the essentials but fail to capture any of the detail with which I am accustomed to viewing the world around me. That would not altogether be entirely debilitating if it weren’t for the fact that my vocabulary itself is receding; words I once knew well enough to clearly define I can now understand solely in certain contexts, while others I can merely recognize as words I once knew. Without the words with which to frame my perception of the past, the memories I do posses become worn and faded, losing what little significance and clarity they had. I'm not sure how that extends to my ability to retain new information; any lapse in grades or inability to recall recently acquired information could not be attributed to my memory without considering other potentially confounding contributions, and I have not attempted to properly gauge my retention. Shifting the temporal focus, I never intended to be able to say this, but I am going to college. It’s not a particularly remarkable institution—it might even be bordering on mediocrity—though I never expected to be admitted into one, anyway. As long as I’m maintaining the facade of normalcy, I’ll have to inspire some amount of hope in others and potentially in myself. None of the traditional justifications involving the future, such as “doing it for my family” or “working towards a successful career” are applicable for me as I can hardly be sure that I’ll be around for such thing, nor would I want to start a family in the first place. The matter of choosing which colleges to apply to and eventually attend was made simple by my lack of incentive to care for anything other than the most basic financial considerations, at the time. I chose the least expensive one, and opted to commute instead of dorm as it would immediately save my mother the most money at the time. I would not say it was a short-sighted decision because at the time I was looking towards the very end of my existence; nonetheless, I will have to live with it for now, part of which includes tolerating my mother and occasionally my father for at least another year. I have kept minimal meaningful connections alive through the summer from high school—again with the mindset of distancing former friends from the severity of the emotional shock—nor have I paid much mind to establishing new friendships with my future classmates; it would not have been practical to do so with no intention of ever further developing those relationships. I’m far from my pinnacle, if I ever had one, and am in no position to improve my circumstances nor reconsider the conclusions I have spent months deliberating, evaluating, and accepting. I have not had the energy to look through this post as I used to do my previous ones; there are likely linguistic and logical fallacies interspersed within it. Oh well, I suppose that's bound to happen anyway. Thank you for taking the time to read all this, I guess, even though I have no expectations in posting it.
