I realized that I was different than most people by late adolescence when relatives of mine began to die.  Where my mother and other family members would be shedding tears over my grandmother’s death, I felt nothing.  The only emotion I distinctly recall was being highly annoyed that I was woken so suddenly from my sleep late at night to be told that she was dying.  Couldn’t that have waited until morning?  It isn’t like I could save her life.

I remember more emotion from the funeral procession than the actual funeral.  I was able to exhibit some aggressive driving by blocking others from crossing into the automobile procession than would normally be allowed.  It was satisfying to cut some punk off that was trying to butt in and I remember smiling about my driving even during the funeral.  I was the only happy, or at least non-distraught, face in the entire building.  Others were sobbing and sobbing and distraught and so on. God was it annoying.  Why on earth would people be wasting so much energy over someone’s death?  I just don’t understand it.

Others in my family would die as the years went on and my reaction was always the same: complete stoicism and apathy.  By the time I finished my education, I realized that my reaction was not typical and was considered disgusting by many that knew me.  You will discover as the posts go by, that my emotional capacity is small and tends to be highly egocentric.  This is not uncommon for psychopaths.

For me, the death of someone I know leads to a choice.  I can either burn so much mental and physical energy in appearing to genuinely mourn someone or I can just accept it, very quickly, and move on.  I am more distraught that the deceased will no longer be able to provide me tangibles than the fact that they no longer exist or that those that did have an emotional bond to them are now suffering.  I am able to realize that most will be so caught up in their own sorrow and will not acknowledge my apathy via their own defense mechanisms.

It would not be until later in life that I would learn why I was so callous and that there would be no way of ever genuinely caring.  It would be around the same time that I learned that this would allow me to fill spaces that non-psychopaths cannot.