I went to get a hair­cut. It was the mid­dle of the day, and the warmth of the sun felt so unex­pected against the win­ter I was liv­ing in. I guess I hadn’t been out of the house in a while. It was mild enough to drive with the win­dows down, and The Alchemy Index (Air/Earth) was on but I felt noth­ing. The com­ing of spring has always light­ened my mood, but warmth wasn’t enough to reach inside me.

This numb­ness haunts me. It’s like my emo­tions have died, and I can’t tell if I like it or not. You know in Fight Club when the nar­ra­tor says, “After fight­ing, every­thing else in your life got the vol­ume turned down.”? This inner strug­gle has def­i­nitely put my life on mute. Sometimes I won­der if I’d jump out of the way if a car came bar­rel­ing towards me, whether my reflexes for self-preservation are still working.

People have been sup­port­ive in very cre­ative ways. Passing on music, notes, rec­om­men­da­tions, per­sonal expe­ri­ences, and other acknowl­edg­ments of the pain. They walk around me as if on eggshells, unsure of what to do. I’d tell them if I knew myself. I feel guilty and unde­serv­ing of the atten­tion, but touched at the same time.

I’ve been stay­ing away from every­one because it’s get­ting harder to keep up the façade. I’m too tired to pre­tend like every­thing is fine. I don’t talk to any­one but John, who acts as if noth­ing hap­pened because the whole sit­u­a­tion makes him uncom­fort­able. I’m not work­ing from home any­more, so I hide in my office at work. I wear the same clothes every day and no one seems to notice. I can’t remem­ber the last time I shaved but I think it was over a week ago.

The hard­est part is try­ing to accom­plish things when I’m so unin­spired. My cal­en­dar has filled out to the mid­dle of April — projects I took on and plans I made when I needed a dis­trac­tion — but now all I want is a nice chunk of free time for some hedonism.

I feel frag­ile and sta­ble all at once. It’s not like I’m in a cri­sis, but nothing’s been resolved either.

For about three days last week I couldn’t stop writ­ing. Now I don’t know what to say anymore.