Lately, I haven't been able to write much. I try really hard, because it's one of the ways I deal with things, and when I can't write, I feel that everything is caged inside, waiting to burst out. I reason with myself, saying that maybe it's a good thing, because then I don't get sucked into cycles of highs and lows. When I don't write I can't dramatize. When I don't write I can't be devastated. When I don't write my life is just left as what it is -- not magnified under the scrutiny of lines and pages of words, meanings and definitions, or structure. But on the flip side, life has become numb and incoherent.
If there is a reason for why this is happening, I think I know what it is. Since May I have been working as a volunteer at the Vancouver Crisis Centre on the Crisis Line. Some of my friends expressed concern, asking me "isn't it very depressing?" And the answer is no. Well, yes and no. If you accept the limitations of what you can do in a 20-minute phonecall with a complete stranger, and if you can toss away any illusion of heroism, of being able to "save" someone, then you'll be fine. But of course that sounds fine rationally and doesn't quite work out the same.
Before I started the whole thing, I thought it would be depressing. Sometimes it was, but more often I got angry instead. And I wouldn't say that listening to all kinds of crap people had to go through makes me more grateful for what I have, so while it doesn't exactly make me sad, it doesn't make me feel good either. I have at least one shift every week, and in the past few weeks I've been noticing a new reaction on my part. Whenever I'm trying to cook up something to write about, I tend to go for the extreme end of the spectrum. But in the face of everything that I come across on the lines, anything that I can think of sounds stupid. I feel ridiculous for making a big deal out of whatever happens to me, because even the worst that has happened is nothing. And I despise myself for even daydreaming about losing my mind, or trying to fill a tragic figure in my own narrative inside my head.
Then I feel numb. And angry, if I can be angry and numb at the same time. I feel angry because I feel that I've been robbed. Robbed of my feelings, my life. I can no longer claim ownership over my emotions, because I'd only end up feeling like a poser. In my own little bubble that I grew up in, nothing warrants extreme reactions, and when I lose the negative extreme, along with it I lose the positive extreme. It's as if everything is filtered, and whatever I get is the toned down version. I've lost my licence to feel. I remember at one point in my life, this is what I aspired for. Indifference, callousness. But now I know it's nothing great.