Missing Heart

It's a beautiful sunny day in the world, with temperatures soaring and the misleading taste of an early summer in the air. I should be feeling elated, but my horizon is darkened by such things as social anxieties of all sorts.

I thought that if I kept confronting my fears I would eventually reach a point of complete recovery, but I have to face the fact that it's not working at all. I'm at a stage where I'm actually trying to force my deeply ingrained nature to act in the opposite way - from naturally distant, withdrawn and terrified to nonchalantly open, extroverted and confident. Let me tell you, when you see clearly what you're made of inside and consciously decide to change it, you have to be ready for some serious inner resistance. Every single time I act against my natural inclinations I feel this swelling wave of intense resistance within, almost like some wild animal springing to the defensive and ready to shred my conscious, deliberate efforts to pieces. And this occurs every single time, leaving me exhausted inside and out.

I must be cheating, in a way. Changes in a person are more likely to unfold over time, with the unconscious side transferring the new rules to the conscious one without the person really being aware of it. But I want to remain in control, and not change according to some subconscious dictat. I want to be the one dictating the changes, or add-ons to the personality I have and which must remain as much under my conscious control as possible. That really means working 'against' your inner brains, and my... I can certainly feel it. It's not like I'm just trying to change a habit, or one slight detail about me - I'm reaching out for the core of my behaviours and attempting to wire them back in a whole other way. This attempt, I realise now, could well backfire in my face in the end.

But there is something else. As much as I attempt to wire myself into 'something else' in terms of how I manifest myself in the world, I realise that no matter how much I reach out for the core that needs to be reshaped something was always missing from the start and because it is missing I can't succeed in the reshaping process. I feel as though that missing element within is exactly why my inner side keeps fighting me.

"I need to reshape my self to grant myself the ability to be social and finally relate to others, be able to build humane connections," says I to the inner core.

"I can't let you do that," retorts the inner core. "If you push me, I'll have to fight back."

"Then we'll fight, and I shall win."

"Look, what you're asking can never work. I would love nothing more than work in sync with you on that but we're missing a crucial element in the first place, and thus I cannot let you do this right now."

"What are you talking about? All we need is a rewiring... All we need to do is learn from social experiences, interactions and observations, and from there polish our new version."

"No. It won't work Aliska because we're missing a crucial element at our core to be able to do that. I can't let you change us so long as that part remains missing. It would be a calamity to try anything without it."

"What is this element you speak of?

"The genuine ability of feelings towards others."

"That's missing?"

"Yes, it's missing. It always was. We're emotionally void when it comes to the world in reality, Aliska. We are cold and deeply uncaring, detached from it all, and you cannot have us change when there is nothing there in the first place."

"You're wrong... I can feel. I have feelings for others, I do care!"

"You only think you do. You'd like to think that indeed but as you stare into the core of us you know it is the truth - this cold, empty void that prevents any real connection to the world. The only one you're able to truly feel for is yourself."

"No...that's not true. Liar."

"Our core is so deeply cerebral that our whole existence is based on intellectualising emotions - not actually feeling. The only way we were ever able to make up for that inability to feel was by using an intellectualised version we could use as a bridge to try and relate to an extent."

"No..."

"That is why we can never feel love for others. We can only intellectualise reasons enough to act as though we do, but our emotions remain void in the face of people in the flesh. We are more likely to feel real emotions for what isn't real than what is, and you know it. You know that full well. Our deeply self-centered core has made us such. No matter how much you try to wire us into another way, that void will only lead to a more clumsy travesty because our lack of genuine feelings for anything or anyone beside I will always transpire sooner than later. I didn't want to have to tell you that so openly, but you've been forcing my hand. I'm sorry."

Being emotionally void when it comes to others, or reality overall.... that is what keeps me from making any progress at all. You can't just pretend that you suddenly have the ability to genuinely care when it's really not there inside.

I have never been in love, and I've never really been able to keep friends for long because much like a seed trying to grow in a desert, there never was any emotional roots that could grow.

Where does one acquire a heart? Mine is missing, or was always so shrivelled up that the only thing it ever knew how to do is care for itself. To realise that you were born with an inner heart the size of a tiny prune is depressing.