The lights are out anyway

There's a part of me that has spent many recent hours wondering. About various things really. Life has once again taken a turn. Could be good, might be bad, all I know is that its a turn. This turn is the end result of a 'toss it to the wind' decision made with my back to the wall, a numbed mind and too few hours sleep.

For the love of the gods, can someone explain to me what it is that can happen to a person that makes them forget all they know? Not the things. Not the wheres and whys and hows, but the basic things that most would call instinct. That inate ability to save yourself. To choose those things which will keep us heading forward in an attempt to grow and prosper. What is it that happens to us when we lose that? How deep were the cuts that let it bleed out? How does it take so much of us with it without us knowing. Deceptively, there isn't even a crimson pool at our feet.

It is a sort of shameful thing, really. There isn't even much pain that goes along with it. I think there is fear; the stagnant cloud of paralyzing indecision sees to it that there is only cycling thought and an absence of almost all other feeling, so I don't know how much of the fear comes through. Nothing comes through but the clock keeps ticking and you should panic but no panic comes if you aren't able to feel the sense of urgency. Apathy would have been an upgrade.

Given all the treetop highs and intense lows that have the ability to level me emotionally, this is new territory for me. I typically feel quite alot and this absence, even when this is what I've wished for during various emotional crises, is a saturatingly suspicious thing. Cloying yet completely invisible and evasive as a politician's promise. I'm not sure I've ever felt so much nothing. And I needed to feel something during this time. Unfortunately it was denied to me. Even worse, there are those that would say that I was denying it to myself. I'd only partially agree.

My theory is that we all live our lives and everything leaves an imprint. Over time, they layer like encrypted films in varying densities over different aspects of our psyche. The name of your best friend in first grade, the way your high school teacher wore too much cologne, words from a vitriolic relationship, guilt from that lie you told, your first roller coaster ride, yesterday's breakfast, all of it... it doesn't go away. But even these wisps build until they are opaque. That's when they cut out the light and you have no connection with yourself as you were once familiar. When enough of these things build in any particular sector of your life, doorways get blocked. The silence of it is enough to chill your soul when you take into consideration how badly something must have hurt you, once or over time, to completely go into self-protection mode and deny you such a simple thing. Feeling.

There is no way to know what sort of effect life's day to day encounters will have but we all try to deal the best we can. When it becomes overload, we succumb. And there is no apologizing to yourself or anyone else for your lack of ability to feel. It may come back, you may have to reroute, but the one thing that is certain is that the pathway is blocked for a reason and to force the pathway open is courting disaster.

So I didn't. And I won't. I'll wait to rebuild and I'll cope and I'll go on living my life the best way I know how. It's all any of us can do.