you ever just… stand there in the middle of something so LOUD and bright and full of energy… and feel absolutely nothing? like you’re experiencing some kind of perceptual disengagement. it happened at this pep rally the other day. the whole gym was just this roar, right? everyone screaming, jumping, all that school spirit stuff. and i was just… there. like a ghost. observing. not participating. not even really feeling *like* i was observing. more like i was a data point in a very specific, high-stimulus environment, and my internal metrics were flatlining. no joy, no excitement, no even mild amusement. just… static. total emotional blunting. and it’s not even that i don’t want to feel it. like, i *know* i should be caught up in it. everyone else was. and i’m a student here, supposed to be part of the community, all that. but it was like my brain just refused to fire those particular neurons. or maybe it’s a symptom of some kind of affective deficit. like i’m watching a movie with the sound off, but the movie is my own life. this is supposed to be the time for like, career momentum, maybe thinking about kids, all these milestones my parents keep hinting at. but i’m stuck in this strange academic purgatory, just trying to get these degrees, and then what? it’s this weird sense of detachment from my own present moment. like i’m perpetually operating in beta mode. or maybe it's some kind of depersonalization. the people around me were so real, so *there*. but i was just… a shell. and it scares me a little, how easily i can just… click off. i keep wondering if it’s an adaptive mechanism i developed somewhere along the way, or if it’s just how i am now. always analyzing, never just *being*. and the thought of trying to explain this to anyone in real life? absolutely not. they’d just tell me to chill out or something. like i haven’t tried that. i just want to understand why my brain is doing this. why the high school gymnasium felt like a soundproof room for just me. why i couldn't connect. why i just… couldn’t.