Live, laugh, lobotomy

Writing this from the hotel.

I departed circa 9:30am this morning. My emptied room felt simultaneously like a nun's room, a hotel room, and a haunted place. To think just a few days ago, it was filled with my stuff, it was decorated, it was mine. I had a fridge and a microwave. I had my markers in their little organizer. I had my books on the shelves, my hibiscus that is too big for my ear, my mock plant, my Bora Bora postcard that I won at the festival, my 1950s Moscow postcard I've been carrying in a frame since I was in college, the matryoshka my mom gifted me when I was 16, my flower box overflowing with foam flowers, my food, my flower garlands, the photos of my cat, my grandmother's bird frame... my posters...

...and now it's empty, clean, ready for the next one, who may never know who I was.

The irony would be that for some reason Hopoe has to come back and ends up in that specific room. Or that someone who knows her moves into it. After all, she used to live in that building as well. Probably not in the same part as me (I recall that once she had to go there to fetch her galons, and it took only a few seconds, so she was most likely in the first corridor. I was in the third), but still. We could've been neighbours if she hadn't moved into that apartment I still have no idea about to this day.

After I gave the key back, I put the remaining essentials into my car. Took a last look at the parking lot (almost typed parting lot, well, indeed I parted with it), the building and its clock on the top. Military bases here often have those 19th century buildings that have seen a bunch of generations. 

Who knows if someone hasn't died in my room anyway? How many have passed through that same room? How many have slept there, been sick, and... attempted suicide?

For the latter, I'm the first that I know.

At the guard post, I gave my badges back. I did not take my knives back. I left them there. I'll have lost a scalpel, a potato peeler and three knives including the big one that almost cut into my radial, but that's fine. Those are just knives.

And those are from the crime scene, anyway.

***

I drove. I texted Cepheus, Esme. My mom. My cousin. Communicated at stops throughout my journey. I'm not one to text and drive. If I must use my phone at the wheel it's typically to use the GPS and I usually wait until I am at a red light or I just find a place to park and then I do it.

***

I stopped at a hotel mid-way through the journey, in Limoges, (as I always do, in the same hotel as usual) around 4pm. I wouldn't mind living there if I were told to, but you'll never know. All you know is that the whole time, I was NOT living there lol.

But there's something that is really concerning me. The fact that I would drive at 90km/h, then 100, and barely feel any fear. My body would indeed have its usual reactions: fear of gagging, seeming to try and "back itself" into my seat, but emotionally? I was dead. Completely dead.

I thought back about what happened with Hopoe and honestly, and I guess that says it all, I'd rather be on the highway or driving fast than relive what happened. In terms of intensity, you put those two events side by side, and so far the 10 out of 10 level of horror and pain was pretty much blown in the snack bar incident, so much that by comparison, the fear I feel at high speeds is at perhaps, 6 (if on national roads) to 8 (highways). 

Like all I feel at all is a mild sadness. It's an inkling of pleasure when listening to certain songs. Or it's a violent blast of anger when some fuckhead tries to force passing while I'm getting out of a parking spot, or overtakes when I'm trying to make sense of a city I don't know and that is in addition filled with roadwork at the moment.

I intellectually am pleased, but my core is hollowed out. There is no genuine emotion inside of me anymore. The fear of getting into an accident is also very much here, but it's quieter than usual. Not in the sense that I'd take risks or not care (because yes, I do actually care about not ending up as human roadkill?), but in the sense that... well. I'm still pushing through, barely feeling a thing.

Feels like I've had a lobotomy. 

My thighs hurt from the pedals and from sitting for such long periods of time. I also often had tension in my neck. It's not like my body doesn't feel danger anymore, if anything, I do feel it. 

My heart rate however remains normal.

And my emotions?

Again. Dead.

I wonder if what being a psychopath is like that. If it's just a sense of nothingness inside. A sense that there's just a ghost where the part of you that was alive, energetic, emotional, loving, all of that, was once sitting. Or perhaps for them, there was no such thing, ever. 

I really don't like this. I'm genuinely afraid that I will always remain a shadow of my former self.

Society will probably applaud, and say, finally, Hi'iaka, you learned your lesson! You are no longer attached, dependent, over-emotional, dramatic, whatever. People would probably love me better this way. Like me better. Prefer me docile, unemotional, and silent. 

But me? I think this is horrifying. I'm genuinely afraid I have died inside. 

Perhaps I have. I don't want to be dead inside. I want to be able to... be alive, at all? Because what is life if I'm merely staying biologically alive because to attempt again is to commit to actually finishing the job, because the ER was punishing enough to detract me from failing ever again, and I obviously don't want that, but to stay alive is to experience life in this hollowed-out way, beaten out of feeling as deeply as I would in the past? Feeling so deeply I'd be in pain, but that made somehow life worth living? Proved that I'm alive, at all, that I'm a human being that exists?

I'm so afraid that this is all I can hope for now. I wonder why I'm punished like that.

Like for fuck's sake, if I get a chance to talk to God, I'll have a word with him. 

"Why."