The older I get, the more I think and the less I feel. I am rarely inexplicably happy. I convince myself that I'm happy, going over a mental checklist of things in my life that are worth being happy over...my boyfriend, my apartment, my cat, the incredible opportunities that have been offered to me, the support I get from great friends, the future, a good meal, cake, massages. Likewise, I am usually rather ambivalent to the harder side of life...sadness, depression, jealousy, anger. I really have to think about all that is wrong to feel these ways. Watching world events unfold I feel bewildered more than anything, as if I can't have an emotional reaction until I have considered all sides of the story. I feel ashamed of unexplained emotional outbursts. The irrational having taken on such a bad reputation.

Is this strange emotional flatness a natural consequence of growing older? Is it because being immerged in a foreign culture, my intuition has been shot to hell and I don't trust it anymore? Is it the remnants of post-9/11 shock? Is it existential ennui, the ghosts of Sartre and Beckett haunting the cafes I frequent? Self-denial and destruction egged on by Jim Morrison's bad influence, risen from his Pere Lachaise grave, only a kilometer from my house and singing to me over the phone lines? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life balanced on emotional apathy? Are they putting Prozac in the water?