Yesterday I found out that a friend of mine is narcoleptic. While I'm sure we all had a good laugh over narcoleptic Enrico Pollini (played by Rowan Atkinson) in Rat Race I'm thinking it's not so funny in real life. Pretty serious actually.
In college I used to thrive on those late night cram sessions to complete a last minute assignment.
I remember my last semester of college- that 20 page paper that was due.
The one I started the week of and wrote 10 pages of the night before.
Ya, that night of 3 Starbucks double shots in a two hour span.
I forced my body to come up with the energy needed to finish that paper (and get a pretty darn good grade on it too).
My narcoleptic friend can't do that.
That was all just a side note. The thought started when she told me that her body has a built in prevention for over stressing. It just shuts down.
"Funny," I thought, "I kind of have an emotional switch like that."
I've never really thought of it like that before but it's true. It's almost as if emotionally I get to a certain point and then it just shuts off- goes to sleep until the situation has reached a more manageable level of emotional involvement. Accept it never happens with what we would view as positive emotions. I am fully capable of experiencing extreme amounts of happiness without my emotional narcolepsy kicking in. It only kicks in when something makes me sad.
I wonder,
Is there any way to keep it from turning off?
What would happen if I were able to let myself feel the depths of sorrow?
To be honest, I don't even know what they look like...
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