heyboss | IC Inbox

It is, but it's not always right for everyone. What about when you feel sad?

I don't. Which isn't to say that things that make other people feel sad don't matter to me.

[The answer doesn't sound defensive, exactly, but it does sound rote, and a little weary: like something she's explained to people many times before, and often to skeptical effect.]

It just feels like nothing. Like emptiness.

Alright.

When you think about your friend, what do you feel? Where do you feel it?

Depends on whether I'm thinking about her being dead or her being alive. My stomach. My throat. My skin.

Stomach and throat and skin is different than stomach and head.

So if not anger, then what?

Sometimes calmness and stillness. Sometimes eustress and exhilaration. Sometimes emptiness. Sometimes-- this is gonna sound weird, but hunger. Literal hunger, like my stomach is empty and so I need to go fill it with food.

Eustress.

[He laughs softly.]

Sounds a little like anxiety. Sounds a little like want. It doesn't sound weird.

Sure.

[She says it slowly, aware that she should probably tread carefully with someone from his time period - even, or maybe especially, with someone in the psychology field.]

Sure, both those things.

Is there something else you would call it?

[He's a little worried.

Maybe she doesn't see it.

Maybe she doesn't want to see it?]

I don't know, I think I'm starting to run out of adjectives.

[A hesitant sigh.]

Do you think...you may have had romantic feelings for her?

Uh-- look, no offense, but my answer depends on whether you're gonna start fixating on that as a disorder to be cured, you know?

No offense taken. I understand the hesitation. Norton gave me the same treatment.

It's nothing to be fixed. I've never believed that. I only asked because I'm trying to get a sense of your feelings on her. They're important. Not wrong.

Okay. Then, yeah, I had romantic... something for her. But that's not what I meant by hungry; I got hungry when I was a kid and found out my dad died, too.

[Pangs of distress interpreted as pangs of hunger. Grief interpreted as a different biological impulse.]

That isn't what I thought you meant by hungry, don't worry.

It's hard to figure out what our feelings are when our bodies take priority.

You planning on offering tips?

You've already told me that you have trouble with identifying feelings. I want you to start grouping them by how they make your body feel.

Okay.

Empty is sad, I guess. Or defeated.

Empty is sad. Stomach and head is angry. What's happy?

No clue. How does happy feel to you?

That depends on the sort of happiness, I guess. Sometimes I feel it in my chest, but pleasant. A lightening.

But you feel it as an emotion too, right? In your brain?

I recognize it for what it is, yes.

Okay.

I don't get lightness so much.

That's alright.

Do you get it ever?

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