It’s strange to me that feeling nothing is so much more difficult than feeling something. On occasion it can become torturous to be in such a state, to the point where I do or think of unpleasant things purposely to attempt to get myself to react. I get a bit put off by the numbness; it forces me to think of myself more as a machine than a living, breathing being. I’m so tightly, painfully controlled, that I forget sometimes that I do it to myself when the situation calls for it. The rest of the time it is out of my control, untouchable, but then when something goes wrong…suddenly I choose to hit the switch. I talk about this constantly because I can’t get it off my mind, and because there is no one but me to wonder over the ‘why’ behind it all.
On average it takes ten minutes for me to get angry over something. Unless it is a direct threat, my reactions are terribly sluggish and short-lived. Yes, my anger, my only friend, abandons me constantly. I don’t know if I’m going to feel it when I should, or not feel it altogether. I loathe the realization that my actions/reactions are as unpredictable as a a coin tossed into the air; my mood does as it pleases, and it can go one of two ways, but I never know which. It makes me feel reckless, out of control…even a little crazy. How can you not know how you’ll respond? I’ve been me for long enough now, I should know by now, yet I don’t. But I did, I used to know. But like everything else, the shift in me rendered it all useless information.
It’s only recently that I discovered that I can control the numbness to an extent, how I can use it as a weapon or a shield if I just gather enough anger to pull it all off. And that’s the problem, the getting angry enough part. Even when I do manage to get myself into a state of mind capable of switching me over, it can only be done for a very short time. It’s not long before that voiceless thought says to me, You think you can control this, you think you are good enough, strong enough? Flashes of bad memories. Flashes of people I don’t want to remember. Flashes of me at points of humiliation. Self hate. All-consuming. And sometimes it’s so strong that I back down because I’m so mentally exhausted from fending it all off, of repeatedly shouting at myself to shut the fuck up. I break down and let it win, let it make me suffer, all because I’m too weak to fight it. Let it play the memories for hours on end, let it deprive me of sleep, because sometimes that’s better than having to summon enough feeling to care that I’m hurting myself. I fight everyday, I get better, yet at the same time I feel something inside progressively withering away, weakening from the constant pressure. It wants to snap, fold, give way to a power better than itself because it is sickened from all the fighting.
I seek a peace I will never have. I know that there will always be a stuggle until I pick a side. I’ve always been the type to stick to middle ground rather than facing a decision head on. I feel like I lose options if I make a choice. The one thing I do like: open options. Let it beat me into submission, let it tear me apart…maybe I deserve it for all those times I was an idiot and helped others instead of helping myself. I deserve it for being so stupid and caring, allowing the world to decide how I think about myself, concerning myself over their every whim. All the while it said I made a mistake…and that I’d pay dearly for it…forever.
Suffer an eternity below me,
Spread your legs like the world’s whore
Do what they say, forget what you think
You are your own worst memory
It’s too bad you’re alive
But it’s not too bad that you have to die
Accept me, or take a dark fate
These wounds I inflict will never heal
I think that was the fastest I’ve ever written a poem. It’s almost shocking that I knew so well what I wanted to say…. I always felt like in every friendship, I’ve always given so much but never gotten even a small amount of it back. Unwaveringly loyal, that is me. But most of all…I am completely and totally unforgiving, even of myself.
P.S. I found some post cards on the table this morning, which apparently my mom has been sending since the beginning of her trip, but I never read since my dad never told me about them. When I picked them up I felt a twinge of something…maybe caring? But it disappeared instantaneously. She’s been gone almost 2 months, yet I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t bring myself to care about anything. It hurts to be like this…. I can’t love, I can’t care. I can’t be anything but a hollow, lifeless thing. And the worst part is…I doesn’t matter to me.
Very thoughtful. Great stuff.
At least you know she is thinking of you. I feel like a chewed and spit out piece of gum at the moment. I just don’t go away, and I want to. My aunt is in town, and I am not pretending anything is anything with me anymore around her. She doesn’t change my life as much as she used to, and you know people always let you down one way or another. I hope you are alright. For too long, my definition of being alright is if I am not on the edge of a cliff or holding a blade ready to die, so I guess at the moment, I’m alright…lol.
That was quite the read lucien. It reminded me of the numbness that I felt as a volunteer fir fighter who later moved into the Volunteer Fire Chief position here in my little hometown. It is so small that we can only have a volunteer fire department.
Needless to say, we had a house fire to deal with and it just so happened that it was my first cousin’s place that was burning at around 2 in the morning. I still find it idfficult to get tired and go to seelp at that time but I digress.
We responded to the fire, put it out, made sure that the fire would not spread to the other residences and ensured the safety of neighborhood from the fire, the downed powerline and several containers of gasoline that could have xploded and made the situation so much worse.
It did get worse but on another level. My cousin succumbed to smoke inhalation and perished in that house fire. After the fire was out and the area secured, we did our search. At the time of the fire, we did not know if he was home or not, we had a job to do and it was in that duty that the numbness of having a job to so sets in.
It is called focus and it serves a great purpose. It keeps your head in the game to ensure that you do what is needed and don’t cause problems for yourself and your firefighters. So the search is on and we wnet through the shell of a home had almost burned out. The structure was not safe and I waited to be sure that it would hold our weight as we continued our search upstairs.
We found nothing and the search on and off the fire ground continued. Tehn a shout came out and several of us rushed to the location only to find that the worse has just been realized.
He lay there face down buried by debris on the subfloor of the basement. He did not burn up but he did perish. That feeling of numbness was back but trauma is trauma and I found it difficult to get those images out of my head after all was said and done. After the hoses have been put away ready for the next call, site secured and taped off, family arrangements for the burial of our loved one underway, we were able to finally settle down and deal with fading numbness and realization that someone died in a house fire. My cousin, may you rest in peace.
So the trauma has passed but the lingering effects did not. Flashbacks continued for me and for my department. Arrangements were made for us to have a debriefing to deal with the situation that is losing a life in a fire that we had to put out.
The person, a trained professional led us on a journey of acknowledgment and acceptance of the situation that we could only respond to. he showed us a method to deal with the flashbacks of seeing the remains face down in the burnt debris. It is a simple one now that I think about it but I can tell you that it is something that is effective becasue it helped me.
Every time I thought about and flashed back on his remains, i was to take a step backwards (figuratively so that the image that I saw got smaller) until eventually I am no longer affected by the thought as I once was.
In terms of coping with things, you have to be able to separate yourself from the trauma in order to see it. It doesn’t always have to be a struggle, there are many ways to look at a situation.
Thank you for telling me that, really. It means a lot. I don’t think I could even imagine what that would be like.
Stepping back would mean forgetting my entire life…it’s all like a bad dream, even though I know there was good in it, and probably still is. I obsess over things and can’t stop, and having a lack of all feeling doesn’t help. It’s just a desire…not to be alive at all, which explains why I can’t stop focusing on the bad.
Not really much of a cure for it besides trying to find some kind of enjoyment out of something just to give me a reason to stay. That probably sounds a bit crazy, but really it’s the only answer I can seem to make about all of it.
I do try to back away from it, it’s just a lot to leave behind.
As I think of it, I don’t know if he (the trained professional) wanted us to forget our trauma, but to acknowledge it and step back far enough from it so that it is manageable. Often when faced with situations where you can’t help but focus on one thing, it is because it has grown to be such a huge thing that you can’t get passed it.
Do not try to leave it behind, step back far enough that you gain some perspective, gain some ground and gain the confidence in yourself to deal with what need to be dealt with.
Consider puzzle that has doohickies, bells and whistles that boggles your mind when you look at the puzzle in motion. Now step back and keep doing so until you see the patterns emerge. Step back again and you begin to see the relationships between all the doohickies and also see points of convergence that will help you solve the puzzle.
Just a thought journey I went on. I hope I didn’t get you lost. LOL
That is quite a good way to think of it: a puzzle.
Confidence seems to be the root of everything, must be why the world gives me so much trouble. Yes, I think I need to remember that everything is connected…meaning not only is there bad, but there is also good. And along with that, because everything is connected and composes something, it can also be taken apart and examined. Maybe then I can figure something out.
Thanks for the suggestion :)