Personally I think you are right arli...if you find the reasons of your conflict and change or get rid of them, hope could resurface and you'll be much more capable than before in ridding yourself of apathy.

BUT (there is always a "but") I believe I am more in the boat with sky. Somewhere along the line, when I was analyizing myself, I lost the reason for me losing my hope. It got blurred in with all of the other unknown factors of why I "feel" the way I do.

"Look at what you did write - you seem to be very nice person and, yes, in your posting you DO CARE. You care for people here...you want to be nice...you want to be yourself. You are yourself. You care. You are not "beyond" things. You have feelings, even for unknown people. " ~ said Arli.

I thought about this for a moment, and I realized that you are right...I do care in a sense...but maybe for all the wrong reasons?

I care because I feel like I have an obligation to (I have always felt that I had an obligation to take in consideration anothers opinion or troubles) but not neccessarily because I want to. Does that make sense?

Maybe I'm missing DESIRE rather than the EMOTION. I want to be able to say that I honest care about something, rather than saying I have an obligation to do this and that because that is just the way things are.

For a long time, even when I was alot younger, I always felt more like an an "inpersonal object" that was made be used, rather than a human being that has a right to act and be who I want to be. Basically, I feel like since I'm a "nobody," and no body (not even family) has any obligation to me why should I have an desire or a want for anything at all?

Why should I care about myself when its apparent that I'm not going anywhere anyway?

Why should I care about anything earnestly, when all attempts end in nothing but failure and I end up feeling more horrible than when I started?

I dunno...I still do not feel like what I'm saying makes any sense to anyone else, but I hope it does. I hate to seem like another whining fool that can't help himself.

either way, thanks for the advice arli (and everyone else) you gave me something to think about.