Numb

April 27, 2019

For the last five years, I've lived a cyclical kind of experience. Symptoms, doctors’ appointments, tests, results, answers, treatment plan, break from medical stuff, symptoms, doctors’ appointments, tests, results, answers, treatment plan, break from medical stuff, and on and on again. Every single time I reach a break, I think I've come to the end. I'll live the next however many years in maintenance mode. And every time I dare to dream that's the case, it's ripped from me again. I keep being plunged into trauma repeatedly like a twisted version of bobbing for apples. Except instead of apples, I've got to try and grasp a diagnosis, but the water's frigid, my jaw is worn out, and I'm tired of coming up empty.

This happens so many times that I've gone numb. I sacrifice feeling happiness or joy so that I won't risk feeling disappointment and despair. I've compartmentalized my life and detached from my body until I no longer feel anything; I feel nothing at all. I'm afraid to let my mind go where it will - into fear, pain, and grief - that I shut down any feelings whatsoever. In all honesty, I don't even care that I've shut out feeling anything positive.

People in my life, whose opinions I value, tell me that this isn't worth it. That it's important to feel the pain so we can also feel joy. But you only say that when you're not in the midst of immeasurable pain, insurmountable fear, incomprehensible grief.  Tell me what's so great about ten minutes of happiness when the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of the day drown it out with thoughts and feelings I didn't think I was ever capable of experiencing. Make an argument that surpasses the grief over the life I once lived and the self-loathing of my body's frail inabilities to function threatening to drown me and then we'll talk. Because I've tried. I've tried to keep balance. I maintain connections with people I love. I put effort into my body to keep it working. I keep going to work. I keep getting out of bed. I keep going out and doing things. Nothing is breaking through. There's nothing that seems worth the very real price I pay to feel.  

If pain were fleeting, if grief wasn't constant, maybe I'd buy into it that feeling happiness is worth it. But when someone asks if simply existing is worth turning away joy and levity, it takes real effort not to tell them the truth. I stay silent or shrug so I don't tell them that yes, yes it absolutely is.  I'm not deciding between a few minutes of sadness and long periods of buoyancy. It's crushing, spiraling periods of prolonged, profound sadness and a few moments of relief or entertainment or excitement that somehow still brings a reminder of what I've lost when it's over. I choose between the two but still end up with grief either way. So yes, the choice is simple.  

This has been my life for years. I’ve forgotten how I used to live, those memories have simply been replaced with pain. Now I've lost the courage to hope.

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