Posts tagged with "numbness"

thousand-yard stare

Heather G left a pack­age out­side my door after try­ing to make plans and get­ting what must have been a dis­tant answer. Organic herbal tea, 80% dark choco­late truf­fles, and not only sushi from my favourite restau­rant, but my favourite kinds too. She knows me extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well for a per­son I bare­ly get a chance to see, and she cares so much even though she has no idea what I’m going through. It’s helped me real­ize that some peo­ple are bet­ter at being what you need, that you can’t expect every per­son to fill all the roles in your life. I’m also try­ing to fig­ure out what those needs are right now, and how to express those needs to oth­ers (or how hard it is for me to express them).

It always takes me a while to recov­er from these kinds of weeks, and this one was par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult. When the cops showed up, I pulled the whole Drexl Spivey thing and ate my Chinese, car­ried on like I ain’t got a care in the world. I know what they need to hear, espe­cial­ly the sec­ond time around, and what’s more, I know that noth­ing they say will make a dif­fer­ence.

Everything has left me feel­ing numb and over­stim­u­lat­ed. Almost all the hours are spent in Far Cry 3 with a bolt-action sup­pressed Z93, wast­ing time and lives in appro­pri­ate por­tions. Losing myself in that world and not get­ting any­thing pro­duc­tive done at all was an easy deci­sion. I know I deserve to be okay for a lit­tle while, and we all deal with our dam­age in dif­fer­ent ways.

Flirting With Disconnection

I had been writ­ing non-stop for weeks. I’m not sure if it was rest­less­ness, or if I had too much to get off my chest, or what. Sometimes I wrote two or three entries at the same time, because my mind went off in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It’s always been a habit to over-ana­lyze things.

Then at some point, the world stopped mak­ing sense. My mind went blank, leav­ing me with noth­ing to say. It’s like my brain had giv­en up on try­ing to fig­ure it all out. I guess it’s bet­ter than think­ing too much.

I feel so dis­tant from every­thing now. A strange numb­ness, unlike any­thing I’ve felt before. The things that used to mat­ter don’t seem impor­tant any­more. Or maybe I just stopped car­ing.

Every now and then, I get a surge of emo­tion, and I’m unsure of whether I should fight it or embrace it.

i love you but i don't know you

i felt dis­con­nect­ed all day. dis­tant. dis­joint­ed. anoth­er bee in the hive. i don’t know why.

when i stepped out­side get­ting off work, it was grey, breezy, devoid of sun­shine.

the bass in my ears moved me. dri­ving the beat of my heart. walk­ing my feet.

the sun slow­ly came out, mixed bit­ter­sweet with the clouds.

and then you showed up. black and white across the street.

i kept my head down as you walked by, care­ful not to ruin that per­fect image in my head. it was enough to keep me going. to make me smile when the most i could feel all day was neu­tral.

i love you but i don’t know you.

The Uncertainty of Complacency

What do I have left to do today? I’m not real­ly sure. I’ll roll my frozen choco­late mix­ture into truf­fles tomor­row. I should show­er tonight. Fold up some clothes. Throw expired trans­fers in the garbage.

Sometimes it feels as if my life has become sim­ple, and all I have to do is turn on auto-pilot. I don’t real­ly have any­thing to wor­ry about. Money, com­pan­ion­ship, school, health, every­thing I used to think about con­stant­ly before have all ceased to be prob­lems for me. I even have peo­ple that I would con­sid­er friends.

Lately it feels as if I’ve reached a sort of equi­lib­ri­um, where any­thing can hap­pen but I’ll be able to deal with any prob­lems that arise. This is quite a change from before, where I was always wor­ry­ing, turn­ing over in my head the things that both­ered me.

It’s almost a form of com­pla­cen­cy. However, this is a sense of total com­pla­cen­cy, unlike even my pre­vi­ous com­pla­cent feel­ings. I’m unsure of whether or not this is a tem­po­rary thing, and how long it will last if this is true. Being com­pla­cent means that the excite­ment I used to feel, from the strug­gle to con­trol unde­sir­able emo­tions, to the ner­vous­ness asso­ci­at­ed to attrac­tion, to the sim­ple uncer­tain­ty of pass­ing a course, has most­ly lev­eled out. These were all scary things, but exhil­a­rat­ing nonethe­less. This com­pla­cen­cy is dif­fer­ent from feel­ing numb because it’s on a dif­fer­ent lev­el. Numbness deals more specif­i­cal­ly with emo­tion, where­as com­pla­cen­cy refers to life in gen­er­al, includ­ing emo­tion. This means that com­pla­cen­cy is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing.

I’m just not sure what to make of it as of yet.