I Feel Blank

My name is Lorale, and I always felt blank. Since I had no life goals, dreams, or interests, I usually just watched others live their lives. I wished I could genuinely smile, cry, get nervous or excited about something.

I grew up as a lab experiment.

For most of my life, I was a lab experiment in an unknown facility with around thirty other kids. They clothed and fed us since they needed healthy subjects, and even educated some of us to obtain working brain samples (I was one of them). In the lab room they gave us electric shocks, hooked us to magnets, and drugged us to sleep. I don't know how many times they cut me open, but I saw stitches in my body quite often. They performed some questionable procedures (once my left leg became a metal bar). Those were painful times.

One day, they finished raising me, and prepared to deliver me into "society". Because they drugged me to sleep on the journey, I did not know where or how they sent me. However, the moment I woke up in the wooden brick building that was set up for me was supposedly the most relieving of my life.

In society, however, I lived as a blank canvas.

At first, the world was new, and I tried my best to fit in. To eat and maintain a bed, I got jobs like every working adult. I worked minimum-wage part-time jobs as an office boy and a waiter. The people at both places were kind. The bosses gave me flexible hours, and I got along with my coworkers.

A few months later, however, the world gradually became gray-scaled. As I fell into the same routine, I lost interest in everything around me. I was bored. Although I got my part-time jobs, I only worked Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (Office job nine AM-five PM, Waiter job six PM-ten PM). I had lots of free-time that I didn't know what to do with, but I didn't have the motivation to work more. Most of the time I found myself strolling idly along the sidewalk with no destination in mind. I was a walking human corpse.

All I ever did was blend in; I did what others did. When others greeted me, I greeted back. When others smiled, I smiled too. For example, I was with my coworkers at my restaurant job one sluggish evening, and they were making fun of the rich lady in a big hat who demanded root beer. I didn't find anything hilarious, but seeing my coworkers laughing so hard, I made out a big smile too and nodded like a bobble-head. I thought what others did was the proper way to behave. However, I felt nothing inside.

Despite my lack of authenticity, I got skilled at imitating facial expressions. My only flaw was imitating tears; when others cried, I tried my best to force out tears. A futile attempt. They said that tears indicate real feelings, and that's probably I had none. I tried to remember the last time I cried. It was on the lab table around a week before they released me.

I think the lab took away my ability to feel.

In a night vision I had, a tree-bark creature told me, "The lab has stolen a body part from you. It is the reason why you are blank." Afterwards, I had this vision every time I slept.

Maybe I was engineered to be superstitious and gullible, but I decided to research because of what my vision showed me.

I asked my boss at the office, "Do you think emotions can be stolen?".

He laughed at me, "Lorale, you sound like a sentimental prince. Which lady broke your heart, haha?"

I laughed too, "Hahaha I dunno."

He started giving me advice about ladies, "Girls are like—"

I zoned out, but I nodded the entire time to pretend I was paying attention.

Afterwards I researched online. "What part of the body gives us feelings?" The heart. The soul. The brain. The lab might have thieved one of those parts from me. I needed an X-ray.

However I later also read posts on the internet where other people also shared their experiences with emptiness. I wasn't alone. Maybe what I am experiencing is normal too. Perhaps the lab didn't take anything from me. Hence I gave up on the X-ray.

I just lived life normally afterwards, as a walking blank stick, knowing there were people who shared my emptiness.

I can feel.

I was on my way to work one day, my mind away from my body like always, when a car ran into me. My legs bled. I felt pain. For the first time in months, I felt fear of death. I had friends at work to see. I had my boss. I had jobs. I still want to know the ending to my favorite TV show. I want to live. Please let me live. That feeling was so strong that I wondered why I ever thought I could not feel. As the world faded in front of me, I felt tears on my face.

The Missing Part

When I woke up, I saw a terrified doctor.

"How... how are you alive right now? How were you ever alive?"

The doctor had taken an X-ray of me. I saw my body. It had a missing hole in the area that was supposed to hold the heart.