Day 328
Apathy was equivalent to a curse word during my energic years of defining who I was to the world. There was no room for middle road philosophies, and I was regarded as a young man of high principals and consistent beliefs.
As life began teaching me that there was little profit or gain from my loftiness — that drawing bright lines had costs that I did not anticipate — my world views began changing, but I still had this image to maintain. Somewhere in there, my brother did an about-face and declared his atheism just a few weeks after walking away from the church where he ministered. His proclamation nearly destroyed our family.
I certainly was not going to be a repeat of that, so I began caring less about the bright lines. When I was later hurt deeply in my marriage, I was determined to stay the course with my persona, standing tall and trying to be the glue and the guy that fixed everything. So I began caring less again. And less again.
Some of it was even conscious as I set strategies to protect myself from worries and distrust; if I didn't care so much, there was much less to worry about. I embraced it and engulfed myself in apathy while maintaining that anti-apathy leader of men and faith. There was a growing conflict between the beliefs I still held and pursued and the questions of self-defense; this had to have played a significant role in whatever happened to push me across the acting-out line several years later.
There was a numbness to the first time I made a conscious decision to act out with another person. There was no moral dilemma about whether to walk through the door, just an observation that it was happening. And it stuns me still at how apathetic I was at crossing that line.
–JR
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