ersatz

Whenever I reach a peak of any emotion, I feel like I grab onto something, anything really. Recently, it’s been places. After I do, an effect happens. When I recall about whatever I get latched on to I yearn for that emotion, in a way. I’m almost nostalgic for it. Then when I do get that emotion in a similar light from before, I strive to want to do whatever appropriate verb matches the proper noun, like I'm recreating a scene. I want to take a step back to look at this attachment and looking at how common it is for me to tie two strings together. It makes me feel oddly artificial.

Let me explain a little more deeply before I go further into my self comparison to a robot. This junction feels like it’s more then just simple association. I'm not talking memory cues exactly, but I feel like memory cues (I’m sure there's a more correct term, but this seems accurate enough for explanation) are what could have started my unconscious act of match game. It's in a way an opposite. Say you're drinking a vanilla sprite and remembering when you first had one, who you first had it with and then going into memories of that person or place. It's like I'm doing that, but backwards. I take my memory of a person, thoughts of a goal or current emotion and try to push it on something, anything at all.

It's hard to explain, let me try an example. This past week I've been in New York. It wasn't my first time, so I wasn't trying to push the touristy things into each day; I was just seeing family, really. When I did go out though, I would just walk around. When I ended up with a chance to get lost on 6th Avenue one night, I took it and felt like I was aimless. I felt like I was looking for something to push my emotions on. Not a person, not an object really either. This all came to mind after I realized I had been walking around for an hour and no intent of going in any store. I mean, usually even if I don't want to buy anything I still look around in the random shops, but I knew in the back of my head that's not why I came. Eventually I told myself the second shop on the next street I would go in. It was a yogurt store, I went in, ordered self proclaimed gourmet yogurt, sat at a table and tried to piece together what was going through my head. I couldn’t figure it out. I walked to the train and went home.

Looking back it's like I was trying to make a memory and hang over it with a plastic transparent overhead of what I was currently feeling, like I was trying to push two displays together. In this case I was adding to the current landscape of my sense of apathy with what was around me, sex shops and piercing parlors. I've been doing this a lot, pushing my current emotions on a memory like canvas, heedlessly trying to shove my current emotion out and stick it to something with hope of maybe getting rid of experiencing it anymore, at least for the time being. It all just makes me feel so synthetic, like I've been trying to get rid of feeling human. I unconsciously just want to be numb.