I Am At War With Myself

THE DICHOTOMY OF APATHY AND JOY

By Austin Harvey

Henry & Co. / Pexels

Warning: Content addresses suicide and suicidal thoughts.

I’ve been having strange dreams lately — vivid dreams, ones that linger somewhere deep in my subconscious long after I’ve woken and adjusted to reality. Whether I can recall the full detail or simply focus sharply on one aspect, the dreams have been affecting my temperament. After one particularly horrifying dream, I woke with the thought “I have to kill myself.”

Let’s be clear, this was not a desire to do so. This was not something I felt that I wanted. Rather, it was a deep-rooted knowledge that I had done something so irrevocably damaging to myself that the only solution was, simply, to end my life. I sat with this knowledge for thirty minutes before another thought hit me. “That was a dream.”

“There’s a side to me that is quirky, un-serious, constantly joking...I call it “Joy.” Operating in the other half of my brain is a part that knows Joy is a liar. It looks to Joy and says, ‘You’re not good enough. You’ll never make it. You’ll never amount to anything. Your existence is pointless.’ I call it ‘Apathy.’”

I was never the kind of person that kept a dream journal. Dreams were for sleeping, and when I was awake they didn’t affect me. I was in therapy for a while as well. Surely, I figured, any negative thoughts lurking at the back of my brain would be sorted out that way. 

I had to stop seeing my therapist about a year and a half ago. I no longer had health insurance, and therapy was plainly too expensive. To be totally honest, I didn’t think I needed to go anymore. I’d made plenty of strides towards finding happiness on my own: reading, exercising, focusing on myself — I was introspective and knowledgeable! Why would I need therapy? From here on out, I said, I would make it work on my own. 

My mind seems to function in a dichotomy. There’s a side to me that is quirky, un-serious, constantly joking — a side of me that appears happy and wants others to feel the same way. I call it “Joy.” Operating in the other half of my brain is a part that knows Joy is a liar. It looks to Joy and says, “You’re not good enough. You’ll never make it. You’ll never amount to anything. Your existence is pointless.” I call it “Apathy.” 

“I learned the word for this feeling. It is ‘depersonalization,’ or ‘derealization,’...It is the feeling that you are watching your life as a detached observer, rather than an active participant.”

Apathy’s voice is loud and booming. It creates an echo chamber, from which his friends emerge like a scene from a 60’s gang movie. Out of the shadows step Depression and Anxiety, nail-wrapped bats in hand, ready to beat Joy down until he is a bloody pulp writhing on the ground and begging, “Please! Please! Enough!”

I am lethargic for days at a time. My routines fall apart. I don’t write, I stop eating well, I don’t exercise. Every time I try and pick up a book, I fall asleep. I walk into work and I’m asked what’s wrong. “I’m just tired,” I say. Or, “I’m just a bit off.” Off. That’s the word. It’s like there’s a switch in my head — I can’t quite reach it. But if it were just flipped on, I would be fine. I’d do all the things I want to do — things I know I should do — and I would be happy. Somewhere from a deep, dark cave, Joy calls out.

“Just do it,” he says. “Just take the first step. I’m still here.” But the first step is seventeen feet high and made of slick marble. My sweat-covered palms could never grip it tightly enough. And in my dreams, Apathy and his gang bury Joy beneath the garden wall.

I’ve started keeping a dream journal. Sometimes, I awake in the middle of the night and quickly jot down as many features as quickly as possible creating a garbled, messy manuscript of a dream — like a blueprint of a word search — an illegible mess of characters and symbols, scratches and addendums trying as hard as possible not to skip over even the most minor detail. Other times, I wake up to a blaring alarm clock with only the faint memory of an image, and the journal entry is simply: “Whale in a flooded parking lot.”

“ I think that it’s important to remember that ‘normal’ doesn’t really exist and that just because we’ve experienced something unique, doesn’t mean we’re ‘abnormal’ or, as I used to say, ‘broken.’ ”

Apathy has blurred the line between the world in my head and the world around me. I’m floating through this world, my feet not touching the ground, my hand never touching another’s, and my heart rotting like an apple on a decaying tree. I’ve grown so accustomed to Apathy’s kingdom, it often feels like there is no land beyond it.

I keep the journal by my bed. It is the first thing I see: a reminder that, yes, I am awake. This is real. When I put the dream down in ink, it removes a layer of reality from it. Stories are written down on paper, and a dream is nothing more than that: a made-up story. 

Sometimes, I don’t recognize my face in the mirror. It has such strange features and can look so many different ways. Whose face is made like that? How can I look like so many different people? Which one is the real one? Which one is me? Other times, I’ll stare at the trees as they sway in the breeze and think to myself that they can’t be real. 

I’m not delusional. Of course, I know the trees are real, as much as I know that when I look into a mirror the face I’m seeing is my own. It’s just a matter of perception. They don’t seem real, not all the time at least.

This is why dreams stick with me for so long. I thought this was a feeling everyone had. 

“Do you ever feel like you’re not really here?” I asked a coworker. “Like your brain and your body are operating on totally different planes? Like there is a barrier between them, and your body is moving on its own?” I was surprised when they said “No.”

“We need to let go of the notion of normalcy. Long live empathy.”

I learned the word for this feeling. It is “depersonalization,” or “derealization,” depending on which of the two you’re experiencing. It is the feeling, essentially, that either you are not real or the world around you is not real. It is the feeling that you are watching your life as a detached observer, rather than an active participant.

I used to speak about my life like it was a film. I attributed this to my having attended film school, but I realized later that it was a way of distancing myself from the events in my life. Instead of saying “personal growth,” I would say “character development.” Instead of talking about a bad event in my life, I would call it a “subplot.” I never found out what the main narrative was supposed to be. I suppose I really won’t until it’s over.

It’s been an interesting journey discovering that a feeling I had always believed to be “normal” was not a common experience, though perhaps the word “normal” isn’t the right one. I think that it’s important to remember that “normal” doesn’t really exist and that just because we’ve experienced something unique, doesn’t mean we’re “abnormal” or, as I used to say, “broken.” 

We need to let go of the notion of normalcy. Long live empathy.

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Austin Harvey is a writer, musician, and video producer from Pittsburgh, PA. He studied screenwriting at Point Park University and currently bartends while producing online content for YouTube.