//------------------------------//
// The Ballad Of Apathia, Chapter 1: Just Like Any Other Day 
// Story: Unfinished Chapter Ones 
// by FS713 
//------------------------------//



My name is Apathia.

My whole life, I have never felt emotion.

Now, that’s not to say I have nothing at all. I have my interests, things that keep me busy, all of that.

But it all feels so… meaningless. Robotic, I suppose, would be the term. It satisfies my need for mental stimulation, but that’s about it.

Some days are better than others. I can successfully make it between arbitrarily timed sleep cycles lost in the things my brain takes arbitrary interest in, keeping the feelings of existential worthlessness at bay. 

Yet, through the hours of that day, I feel little true passion, or any kind of real thrill. Just droning along with what I’m doing while my brain remains arbitrarily satisfied, but never once truly feeling anything.

Just like any other day.

I have two triplet sisters, and I envy them both deeply.

The slightly older one is named Karma. She’s the happiest, nicest, funniest, most enthusiastic pony you will ever meet. She lives her life in a perpetual state of joy, giving her approval to everything. I look at her and I see somepony who loves being alive and feels genuine passion for what she does every second of the way.

I wish I could be like that.

Then there’s the younger one, Discentia. Discentia is sort of a harsh critic of things she doesn’t like, and many see her as sort of mean, but it all comes from a good place. Discentia loves art, of any medium, and while she can be incredibly harsh on what she doesn’t like, it only comes from a place of true appreciation for the things she loves. She cares deeply about the art forms and therefore holds them to a high standard.

I wish I could be like that.

But I’m not. I’m nothing more than an emotionless drone, pretending to have true passion for my craft when really it’s just arbitrary. It’s all arbitrary.

Who do I think I am to act like I truly love these things, like I have any passion whatsoever, when there are ponies out there with such deep, genuine connections to these thing, ones who have such more of an emotional bond with them than I do my brain’s completely random interest in them?

I desperately wish I could feel. I want to experience the elation of hearing a truly beautiful piece of music, to genuinely laugh, and cry, and feel my heart warm up, but… I don’t.

I see other ponies that are so emotional, so easily moved, with such a sense of beauty of the world, and I feel bad that I can’t be one of them. Bad that I can’t share in that experience of emotional elation, positive or negative. I just join in and pretend that I feel the same emotions, hoping I can at least appear to fit in, while my mind doesn’t see the appeal in any of it. It would rather focus on facts or numbers or having yet another existential crisis than actually feel something.