I decided to become apathetic in sixth grade.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why I started in sixth grade. Sixth grade was the year I entered middle school and started to doubt everything about myself.

Prior to sixth grade, I’d never cared about self-image. I didn’t have to — because I was smart. And in elementary school, just being smart can give you a dangerous edge. If you have brains, you have respect.

When I started sixth grade, however, I discovered that I couldn’t depend only on my brains because — surprise! — there were other smart people in the world. In fact, some of them were even smarter than I was. And for the first time in my life, I began to notice the stuff on the outside: they were prettier than I was, they were skinnier than I was, etc.

I was neither hideous nor overweight, but I was also neither beautiful nor thin. I was just kind of normal. But, ironically, by being normal, I was being different.

I don’t think anyone ever explicitly said anything to me about being different. I just felt different. I felt like I didn’t belong, and I hated that feeling. So I learned to suppress those emotions whenever they arose. It was easier to lie to myself and say everything was okay than to feel sad because I felt left out.

I didn’t expect it to work. It did. It worked so well that I soon turned Project Apathy into a full-scale project. Anywhere and everywhere I felt left out, I would manipulate my emotions so they would all say the same thing: “I don’t care.”

This was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I traded away all of my emotions — even the good ones — for temporary security. While I could argue that this was beneficial because it kept me from blowing up over little things, I see now that I didn’t stop my anger. I just bottled it up until I couldn’t take it anymore and blew up, usually over something ridiculously petty.

It’s taken me four or five years to finally admit that I’ve been participating in and supporting a project that’s really not good for me. Project Apathy may have made me feel safe, but at a deadly cost. And looking at the person I am now, I see that it all wasn’t worth it.

I want my happiness back.