I don’t know if other people feel…. 

The opening line is from Access Road by Alison Luterman. 

I don’t know if other people feel this way, feel the way I do. Yeah, that’s what a lot of people expressed, at some time. I don’t particularly feel anything right now. Sure, there is the ebb and flow of emotions. But it’s all underneath like undertow. Very much so. 

I don’t know if other people feel happy the way I do. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Do I care? Not really. Happiness is personal. Should be personal. If you weigh your own happiness down with others’, that just makes it so much harder for yourself. So why do it? Conservation of effort is a survival instinct, is it not? Why go against it? 

I don’t know if other people feel sad the way I do. I don’t even remember feeling sad. I’ve never liked tragedies. I don’t tend to read them. I don’t set out to watch any. They leave something nasty behind in my stomach or my mind afterwards. I feel bad things in my stomach, as a kind of formless weight. That’s how I know I feel bad. Otherwise, I block it. I block it from my consciousness. I’m a great believer in the unconscious, in self-healing. My unconscious usually takes care of it for me. Usually. 

I don’t know if other people feel angry the way I do. I don’t get angry much either and never quite file it away. It falls under bad things for me. I don’t actually feel heat or anything like that. It’s just a weight, a formless weight.