Shape Shifting

I don’t have a conscience; or do I? Its peculiar, I often find myself faking feelings or emotions to play nicely into the moment that I want to create. I don’t think I have felt a legitimate emotion since the age of twenty and that’s giving a two-year generosity gap for psychological transition.
When I was eighteen, I had a conflict with my Dad. He had promised to help me with college applications and assist my younger sister with her math homework. Simplistic fatherly duties, one would assume. My Dad had been slowing abandoning those practices ever since his adoption of a new girlfriend and her set of lunatic responsibilities, four years prior. Dori, the Medusa-eqsue, pathetic excuse for a human was a high school dropout, yet she had the brains to wrap my M.I.T. educated father around her vile and crooked finger. So much for higher learning and it’s false pretenses about educating the “whole of you.” Dad could deduce an algebraic proof with the dexterity of a professional tightrope walker, but when it came to common sense, he was the circus clown.
On this particular Sunday, my father had verbally pledged to make good on his promises to Lauren and I, regarding her math assignment and my collegiate enterprise. My series of unsuccessful calls began at 10:30 a.m., with follow-ups made periodically on the hour, all of which went unanswered – finally at 4:30 pm, Delilah, or Satan’s spawn (daughter of Dori) answered the home phone and proceeded to tell me that Dad had just walked in the door. He had taken Dori out shopping that day in an attempt to soothe one of her deranged episodic fits.
I wish that I could accurately describe the enormity of dysfunctional senses bubbling inside of me at that moment, but since I now am an emotional mime, tapping into such real feelings and articulating them is impossible. I can only remember a rush of heat filter through my body and electrify each cell with an unfiltered rage; without conscious decision my hand grabbed Lauren, my mouth voiced, “get in the car” and my foot hit the gas pedal with reckless abandon.
Five minutes later I arrived at the three story peach townhouse and noticed immediately that it’s color now took on a rusty appearance and the open window on the second level was emitting a thick air of negativity into the cul de sac. I pushed through the invisible wall of reality as I opened the front door to enter the other universe: the inside of my fathers’ home, and in the middle of the foyer, I started to scream. “You liar, you liar. You told us that you would be there and once again your promises were empty. You chose that piece of white trash over your own flesh and blood. Everything you ever taught Lauren and I about education, respect, creativity, and individuality, you forfeited. And for what? To take this white trash, redneck, uneducated, gold-digger out for a day of monetary indulgence. Lauren and I were counting on you to come through, and I thought that maybe, just this once, you would remember the importance of your children, and that we still need you as a father.”
Tears were steaming down my face and the heavyhearted words kept coming; I couldn’t stop the waterfall of emotion. Somewhere in the faint distance of my screams, I heard a door slam and before I had time to clear the tears from my eyes, a blurry figure materialized and stood two inches away from me and said, “white trash, I’ll show you white trash, you little fucking bitch.” And then like the gates to the fiery furnaces of hell, her cracked lips parted and hurled a giant glob of saliva at my face. It hit me right between the eyes. As the tainted spit dripped down my nose and seemingly permeated my pores, I screamed, Lauren screamed and we both ran out of the house sobbing violently.
I expected my Dad to follow Lauren and I. I wanted him to run after us, envelop us in his arms and say “wait, I’m so sorry, I love you;” like the man I had known four year earlier. But he didn’t, he went after her. As I sat in the driveway of the rusty townhouse with my Ford Explorer in reverse, I wiped the spit off of my face with a clean tissue, and although I still felt disturbingly dirty, my foot wouldn’t let off the brake. I wasn’t ready to give up on my Dad; I didn’t want to believe this was all real, so I held the brake for five painfully hopeful minutes. Finally, when no one surfaced through the invisible barrier, I let my foot go, backed out of the driveway, and left my emotions somewhere inside of that house. With that single act of reversing, I lost my ability to feel, because feeling hurt too much.
Soon after, I learned the art of tempered lies, where my own portrayal of empathy, sadness, love, anger, hope, despair, etc. would manipulate someone else’s emotional core and in turn facilitate the response that I sought or “felt appropriate.” However, I never truly felt again.
The bizarre part is that I don’t know if I feel guilty about this or if I even care. My actions have become so calculated that it’s the uncertainty or lack of emotion that plagues me. Have I become a sociopath? My therapist would be delighted to slap such a definitive term on me, but I don’t think I’m that characteristically shallow. Maybe I am? The weird part is that I don’t know.
I don’t feel guilt from lying or manipulating certain situations in my life; my embellished actions serve their purpose at the time. But still, this lack of emotional cadence is what I grapple with each day, and a stint in therapy did nothing to alleviate it. It was just another “role” played in the life of Lindsey Elyse. The fact that I cannot recognize when, and if, I feel an emotion, is the void that eats away at my core. When that tainted spit hit my face ten years ago, an emotional parasite entered my body and it still continues to feed on my conscience.
I’m lying. I am actually a robot. I just felt this story was a more intriguing tale behind my cordoned conscience – a way to extract the feeling or response that I am soliciting. Can you guess what it is? I’ll shape shift to make you feel intelligently introspective.