I Don’t Care Anymore

Today I woke up and realized I don’t care anymore. 

A man was shot behind my house this morning. The shooting happened early this morning after a night of chasing and drones and police stuff that I was totally unaware of. Even the dogs didn’t hear it.

The cops closed the road in front of my house, and suddenly the morning turned eerily quiet. No cars. No trucks.  It reminded me of how it was during the pandemic. I kinda miss those days.

G listened to the scanner’s static. She went out and talked to the maintenance guys next door. She gave the state police footage from our door cam. She walked to the coffee shop to schmooze with the locals.  

I drank my coffee on my couch with the dogs at my feet and perused the headlines in the New York Times app on my phone.

Trump nonsense, Iran war schizophrenia, Epstein bilge.

The Knicks won unexpectedly.  

As the morning passed, I noticed I was surprisingly content, weirdly unfazed. 

It was as if the world was happening, but it had nothing to do with me. 

For the first time in my life, I didn’t want anything to be otherwise. I didn’t have any objection to anything that was happening. I walked the dogs. I went to the gym. I worried about what I was going to write here.

Just a few months ago I would have felt my whole nervous system kick into overdrive at a thought of a killing behind my house, or Trump simply still existing, or the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, or how the closing of the Strait of Hormuz was going to affect gas prices and the availability of plastic trash bags, and on and on.

This morning I noticed none of this stuff triggered me at all. None of it precipitated any ragey convos in my head. 

The world completely lost its reality for me. It was only real in the way a novel feels real when I’m engrossed in it—real, but not my reality. I felt myself in a bubble, the world a movie I was watching but not grasping.

I don’t know what caused this shift. It feels better, though, and right. I want it to continue. Feeling detached and chill feels like the only way to meet this moment.

My only explanation for this shift in perspective is that I may have reached my saturation point. My nervous system and my psychology simply can’t take the world anymore. I don’t have any more room, patience, or time for it.  

It feels right, but also weird. Who am I without my neurosis? Without my obsessive worry? I don’t recognize myself. What happened to that old, easily triggered me? Will I wake up tomorrow to find she’s returned?

God, I hope not.