When it feels like the whole world is against you and are in the pits of despair, everything feels like a trap and experiences that you once enjoyed immensely feel the same way a punch to the gut does. Welcome to the numbness that entices you in your worst moments.
When every moment feels like death, the absence of feeling anything is like a port in a storm. In those times, the numbness feels like a superpower. If I can’t feel anything, nothing can hurt me.
Admittedly, I have used this superpower like an addiction. Even though I had fallen out of love with Zeus by the time our marriage was through and felt trapped in a loveless marriage, the end of it all still caused me a pain I don’t wish on my worst enemies.
I needed the numbness.
I chased it like a cheetah chases a gazelle. I needed to feel strong even if it was a facsimile of strength, the mere illusion of power was better than the true feelings I was forced to endure.
I did anything I found to attain it, distractions were my go to. Most people call them lovers but there was no love between us. Just people who were lonely and needed to get off.
If I couldn’t find someone to insert themselves into me, I injected myself with another kind of fluid. When I was tired of stitching up my latest design, the needle in my hand was quickly replaced by a needle in my arm.
If those two avenues of absence were closed off to me, I slept. Unconsciousness is the ultimate numb. As long as you’re only sleeping and not dreaming, you don’t feel a thing.
The problem with numbness is the problem with any addiction.
It’s a trap that prevents you from focusing on anything else.
When you chase it, you can’t chase anything else.
How can you run towards anything when you’re running from everything?
I had to break away from this addiction.
Like a bear trap, it clamped onto my leg and wouldn’t let go.
I couldn’t fight out of it, I needed help.
I had to face the reason I wanted to be numb, I had to defeat it.
Insert the new addiction that has overtaken my life, Zeus’s downfall.
I found the help I needed in others he had hurt.
It’s a lot easier to get out of a trap when others can dismantle it and pull you out.
If there’s something that can overcome numbness or the pain you’re trying to avoid, it’s drive.
It’s a vision.
Your vision and mine are different of course, Vision but its a similar path. Endure pain, become blind to it either literally or figuratively, ignore it and become better than we were before by pursuing what’s important to us.
The difference between ours of course is I’ve gotten out of the trap of a one track mind.
That’s the problem of the blind leading the blind.