I used to cry

I used to cry.

I would hear a song or see a movie or watch a video and I'd cry.

I'd cry hard.

That Ed Sheeran song about the A Team would come on and I'd cry in my car and just bawl and lose it.

But, I don't cry anymore.

I'm too hardened by months of sad existence. 

I heard that song -- the one I heard when I was 16 -- "never felt, never know, never shined through in what I've shown..."

And I felt it ... the sensation, the emotion, the calm before the cry.

But, no cry.

No choice but to go on.

To move on. To keep driving. To go to "work." To do what I had to make at least some money today.

Can you be so sad you don't cry?

Can your soul die inside and never come back?

I'm not sure.

I used to want to be touched.  Now, I don't.

I want to be alone and only alone.

All day. Every day.

Forever.

Something is clearly wrong with me. 

The same things keep happening again and again and again.

So, it must be me.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know why it happens.

I know that I don't cry and don't want to be touched and I want to be alone.

I know that I'm watching my life from outside myself.

Do people know I have a dying soul?

Do people sense the rotten dark spot inside me? Is that it?

What if I can convince just one person to not see it... to look past it?

Will my soul regenerate just a bit? Can I get it back?

Every time I think about being completely happy, I think of a single moment when I was 17. 

One, single moment.  That moment was surrounded by other, very joyous moments.  But at that moment, I was completely, totally happy. 

I was innocent, young, ignorant of the perils that awaited me.

And I wonder if, if I'll ever feel that again. Or something close.

Or, if, because I don't cry, I can't be truly happy, either.

If the loss of my soul is permanent...

I used to cry.