apathy; memories which time has deformed into certainty

i think there are two possible responses to trauma.

I've only experienced minor ones (thankfully) so here's my two cents.

the first is probably the more common, to just react outwardly. This means crying, throwing a tantrum, 5 stages of grief etc. i wont go into this too much cos its fairly obvious and not my point. but its so obvious for a reason, to illicit a response from those around you, a call for help. and it is this response that, to the victim, seems to be a sign of how much people care about them. its fairly simple, you cry your heart out, post a coded story on Instagram, and everyone replies with "are u ok"

(and, very cynically, i don't know how much this response is actually an expression of care rather than the fulfilment of a perceived obligation as a friend. and on the part of the victim, how much is too much to ask of a friend reaching out? did they raise their hand just to hear you rant? or did they raise their hand to take you in on their couch.) basically my point is that this method is inherently dependent on others. and if they are unwilling/unable to provide the extent of support you need, which can obviously be a lot, depending on the context, then tough luck. (this does nOT make them a shitty friend, just a rational human being <3). It also sucks that this is completely mutable. friendships, however strong, don't always last forever. people grow apart, move away, etc. and those are just the benign reasons. so while you may spend a couple of years with your friend, there is one person you can't escape: yourself.

The second method i find more comforting. apathy. its like, when something hurts, you just tell yourself you didn't care in the first place. broke up with a girlfriend? oh well, i never cared anyway. lost something? oh well, fuck it. never wanted it. and this apathy hardens the heart. it calcifies what is most vulnerable, embracing it in a stony carapace that shields it from grief's arrows. they bounce off, life goes on, and our armoured heart repairs itself, ready to meet grief again.

but this carapace suffocates. it squeezes and constricts what it is meant to protect. what a heart delirious perceives is unwittingly sharpened into another arrow in grief's quiver. the slightest reminder dredges up a memory so intently buried and our carapace, so carefully crafted, so deceptively strong, the bedrock on which we choose to build ourselves, shatters with a pinprick, revealing the asphyxiated heart within.

the material with which it is built is inherently weak; our apathy is built on self-deception, fallaciously denying the antecedent. you build up your defences, sure, but grief is still out there, sharpening its arrows and gathering its stones. Lurking, as I cower in my artificial fortress. is it not better to take grief head-on, while one is strong, before the heart is petrified? apathy is really stupid.

but it is also such a good response. it is instant gratification taken beyond the logical extreme. it is also the only completely autarkic response. you do not need anything to tell yourself that you didn't care. and for all intents and purposes, if you succeed in changing the past, then yeah, you've managed to more or less beat grief, or, to extend the metaphor, at least drive far enough to where it cant hurt you. because now that you think you didn't care, there really isn't anything to be sad about. you've rewritten history, conveniently castrating grief by leaving it out of the narrative. in the astutely poignant and decontextualized words of Julian Barnes, "some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty". Apathy is so easy, so strange, and its so hard to escape the comforts of well-intentioned apathy. you just need to trick yourself into changing the past by telling yourself the new version enough.

and this is the key. its a wholly personal process, one that you can do 24/7 because you're with yourself 24/7, like it or not. who cares what others think? who are they to care if you don't? this way, you are self-sufficient. you need no one else but yourself. you don't need throngs of adoring friends (well-intentioned) to check on you and devote a part of themselves to you. and this solves the problem i pointed out at first. this way you avoid being cynical about your friends, you avoid asking too much of them, you avoid relying on what is inherently mutable. if any of my friends happen to be reading this, its not your fault i still love you guys.

ultimately, you're the only person that can, and has to, deal with your own issues. i guess looking at things from this perspective, however rife with short-termism, apathy seems like the only logical response, an extension of retreating into a shell.