“What do you mean you’re sad?  You’re always happy.”

The words bounced around in my head last night as I lay back on my porch and looked at the stars.  They didn’t seem to be shining as bright as they should be on such a clear August night.  Maybe it was the long-forgotten memories I was allowing to rush in.

The words seemed so ridiculous at the time – especially because the mouth that spoke them belonged to the root of so much of the sadness I was feeling back then.  In retrospect, they make perfect sense: At nineteen, I would put a smile on my face and make a joke even while my heart was breaking.

It’s a self-destructive defense mechanism that I still struggle with at twenty-five.

Nostalgia can be dangerous in an addictive sort of way – it has certainly always been my favorite drug.  Sometimes I attempt to remove myself from present woes and future worries by lamenting on pain from the past.

I tried to do that last night.

I tried to remember the feelings, but there was nothing there.  I remember the moments and what was said, but the connection is gone and all emotions absent.  It was like trying to remember some movie I saw in high school- and a movie with poor acting and a lame script at that.

Cicadas chirped in the distance and the cement slab cooled my back.

And I felt nothing.

I’m still trying to decide if being numb is better or worse.