I know that a lot of people hear the word apathy and automatically think of teenagers who blend in with the "in" crowd by not trying (or half of them, trying hard to appear as though not trying while in reality, they were exerting twice the effort), but those people are dead wrong. Sure, apathy itself can be harmful to a person, because it leads one to neglects one's presumed responsibilities that humanity has bestowed upon  us. If I traded a Save the Whales sign for a Sleep Now, Care Later poster, I'm pretty sure that I'd deserve whatever punishment came my way. But the thing that nobody seems to understand is the fact that first off, nobody's taking their share of responsibility for all the  crap that's happening, and second off, true apathy is one of the most cathartic elements available to an individual.

It's as simple as this: when you care, half of that caring energy is directed towards your goal, while half is directed towards caring about who's caring about you. Every action can then be psychoanalyzed, until that Save the Whales sign is only about 10% about marine life and 90% about who's watching, and that's not caring, is it, because in my opinion, you have to care about the right thing for it to count. Otherwise, it's like shooting a criminal point blank and claiming that the means don't compare with the end result. BS.

Meanwhile, when you don't give a damn whatsoever,  you're not laughing too loudly or smiling too brightly or talking to a crowd instead of an individual. You're doing what you want to do without  wondering what other people think. You're not faking who you are to adhere to society's standards. And that's the absolute beauty in apathy. You strip away all the grandeur of illusions created for the world and are left with only the reality that exists solely for you. Apathy is the only path to identity.

One day in my life, just one day, I want to lay down on the grass and let rain slowly bead up on my skin. I want to feel each droplet hit my skin,  gentle but fierce. I want to feel a chill settle into my bones, telling me that this is real. I want to catch some in my mouth, let it stick to my eyelashes and hair like a coating of snow, to feel soaked  inside and out, laid bare, letting the rain cleanse me, wash away all the pain and anguish and guilt and doubt and anger and insecurity and  loneliness. And on that day, when people walk by and stare, I won't notice, because I will be surrounded by an ocean of apathy, but in the eye of that apathy will lie my identity, and when I grasp that, I will be made whole. I'll be restored, completed, perfected, because the secret to apathy is that apathy isn't apathy at all.

Apathy isn't a void of giving-a-damn. It's entirely made up of giving-a-damns, but all those give-a-damns are about the right things, the real things. All  human contact does is put everyone on a stage, whereas apathy takes everyone down to their own rightful level and lets them view things through their own eyes.

I want that day to come, but it hasn't come yet. So I'll hide. I'll live through another's eyes if that's the only way I can live.

One day, though.

One day I'll be real.