Many times I believe that I just don’t feel enough pain. Is that not the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? I hear some of the sad stories people tell each other and I’ve had friends who’ve confided things to me, but for the life of me I just can’t comprehend some of it. I can try, but it’s not the same. I want to feel pain for them, as if that would make them feel better.

A child was never meant to watch her best friend die before her bright, innocent eyes. She was never meant to live the rest of her beautiful life believing that it must have been her fault because they were best friends through thick and thin, and best friends always stick together and never let anyone hurt each other, no matter what. And she will always cry a few extra tears because no one will ever really understand it the same way she does.

It’s not fair for a son to work seventeen hours a day and then one night come home to find that it wasn’t enough to keep his mother alive. All because she hungered more for heroin than for something to fill her stomach. And he loved her so much anyway that he lost everything because of it. It’s funny how cries for help always seem like background noise until they suddenly disappear. Then everyone notices, and they reassure each other that there was no way they ever could have known.

I want to be sad and I want to cry, to shove my fist so far into a pane of glass that my hand bursts into the bright red shade that I yearn to feel inside. I want to reach out and grab the hurt and anguish from them and crush it deeply into my chest, down – way down – into the bitter core of my stomach. What scares me is that I don’t know why.

Am I naive? stupid?
Is there something wrong with my head?
Or am I just a self-centered asshole?

I just don’t know.