The first steps: What are feelings without emotions?

As a child I threw my emotions away, sealed them behind a door where I stored other seemingly useless junk. I was, at that time, served with constant bad emotions and thus developed a loathing for them - and an affinity for ignoring them.

I spent my days in a world of my own creation, a glorious realm of dreams, imagination and victorious battles against fictitious foes. I had a brother in arms, my closest friend, he and I went through most of the same things and were inseparable. We lived in that realm together, separate from the rest of humanity, bound by our similar plights and unwillingness to kneel or admit defeat.

Children have such great weapons against bad feelings - creativity and the ability to dream. As you grow older you are educated and taught that those things are not real, and thus stripping them of their power. By the time you are fourteen education has stripped you of your defenses and thrown you to the wolves, and then it's sink or swim.

We grew older and colder, more apathetic with every year and every episode of terrible home life. Through all of that we grew closer and more attuned to the needs of the other. Back to back we fought such terrible foes as depression, suicidal thoughts, the deaths of our closest family members, one sided love and the worst of all - an inability to relate to peers whom were simply not even close to our level of maturity. We were ancient men in the bodies of teenagers.

The resulting apathy, withdraw from society and total withdraw from any form of self was an inevitability. Only now are we able to go back to our roots and deal with sixteen year old demons.

A conversation from the present:
Him - "You know, facing them is tough even now. When those emotions break through I just feel desperate, I can't cope and I break down. At least you have figured out how better to deal with yours than I deal with mine." Me - "It's funny you should say that, I was kind of thinking you deal with them better than I do." Both - "*Laugh* *understood and non-awkward silence* *Lighting of cigarettes*"