Weaponized Apathy

Tired. That's how I felt. Tired, with a raging headache and a sore jaw from grinding my teeth, which is an odd habit that I seemed to have picked up as of late. School had dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up in my room, shut off any and all light sources and vegetate in my bed for a while. Which is exactly what I did.

After about half an hour of this, I finally conceited to the fact that reality was still there and I needed to deal with it eventually. Fully aware of the large amounts of homework that awaited me, I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed. Except I didn't. After a bit of struggling, it dawned on me that I physically couldn't get out of bed.

A little history lesson: In my freshman year of high school, I did a short stint in therapy, for various reasons that don't need much elaboration. After a few visits, the therapist reached the conclusion that I was incredibly depressed, which is pretty much exactly what you want to hear when you're a hormonal unhappy high schooler. This depression has been prevalent in my life for quite a while now. I gave up on it ever going away and eventually, I internalized it to the point that it's now a fundamental part of who I am. The problem with this is that, every once in a while, my depression gets bored and decides to beat the ever-loving fuck out of me, which does a wonderful job of destroying my motivation. For whatever reason, in the brief time that I was laying in bed, depression and apathy came upon me like a massive weight. Nothing in the universe could have possibly convinced me to leave my bed.

Time continued to drag on while I remained motionless. My mind, normally a restless orgy of nonsensical thoughts, was completely blank. My dog was laying in the bed with me and eventually got bored. She punched me, licked me, nudged me incessantly, buried her face in the crook of my neck. No matter what she did, I was unresponsive. At one point, it occurred to me that I had a lot of things to do and there was no way in hell I was getting any of it done. I tried to lament this, but I soon gave up on that endeavor and went back to being borderline comatose. 

Then something happened.

My brain was choked with an apathy-induced haze, and none of my thoughts could coalesce into anything coherent before being whisked away by the wind. But through this thick fog, a blinding light appeared. A brilliant idea occurred to me, instantly dispelling the smoke of my mind.

I could totally use this to my advantage.

My apathy and depression had reached such a point that I didn't care at all about what happened to me. Hell, my house could have burned down and I probably wouldn't have twitched. But therein was the beauty. All my chores, my homework, things that I generally detest, could be accomplished and none of it would elicit a reaction in me. I entered a sort of autopilot, watching with perfect detachment as my body went through the motions of the day, plowing through my work like the automaton it was. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could feel excitement trying to crack through the shell of depression and make its way into my brain. I quietly snuffed it out, and instead simply acknowledged the fact that I now had a new tool at my disposal in my personal war against depression. Not that I particularly cared, but I was capable of acknowledging the fact that this would probably be really useful in the future.

As I have no real way to end this post, here's a picture of Guatemala.

Disclaimer: The author of the blog "Hyperbole and a Half," which I hold in very high regard, has made a similar post here. I'm putting this here because I don't feel like being accused of plagiarism or getting lazy and hijacking her ideas. I would never plagiarize any piece of writing...unless it's school related. Then that shit's mine.