Numbness

I felt it. The pain you’re talking about. You might not believe me because I know it seems strange. Impossible even.

But believe me.

I felt it.

Maybe more than you ever did.

--

It started more as a sort of numbness than any actual pain, but it progressed and transformed into something I never thought possible, and it consumed me.

Day and night I felt nothing but pain coursing its way through my entire body. Fingertips tingling. Eyes burning. Toes curling and cramping into such a contorted form of what they were supposed to be that I no longer went barefoot. I was embarrassed and ashamed to look at them myself out of fear I might vomit at the sight.

Then the memory loss began.

Days slipped by me. I’d stare off into the darkness, where I’d hide. No one knew me there and it was comforting.

I had no one to answer to. No one to judge or mock me. No one to point out my failures.

I started writing as a way to help the memories remain. I didn’t want to live a life where I remembered nothing.

--

The words I’d write became my life. My world. They felt like a greater part of my being. My imagination had blossomed and taken form in words which, as a child, I never thought about. I took them for granted.

Words.

Names.

Things.

Everything with a purpose when a purpose seemed unattainable.

They helped me cope. Helped me grow as a person.

Helped me remember what I wanted to be.

At least I think so. It’s hard to tell anymore.

--

I still feel a numbness from time to time. That never really left me. It’s difficult to describe even though we all know the word and the meaning.

I’ll try to put it like this.

Say you’re learning something for the first time and you’re excited and eager to learn and when you first learn this new task you can’t wait to show all your friends what you’ve just learned. You can’t wait to show them how simple it is to do something that before seemed to be one of the most complex functions you’d ever come across at that point in your life. So you show you friends and they’re excited for you and they feel a new sense of being because they learned something else they’ve never known.

So now we’re all on this same page. We’ve all learned something new. With time, that new task that we’ve learned becomes less of an excitement and more of a monotonous drone that wears at you. It’s like you do the same actions that only a few days, hell even a few minutes ago, seemed like you’d never tire of and you get good at them. So good, in fact, that what once had taken you maybe twenty-five … a half hour to do, become something you can finish in ten.

And then you wait.

Wait and pass the time and think about nothing other than how you feel empty now.

Now that there’s nothing new to learn … nothing new to do … you feel empty.

Once you know that feeling, you can almost understand what I mean by feeling numbness.

Almost.

But not quite.

I don’t think you’ll ever truly know the numbness I feel.

But it’s getting better.

Because of her.

--

I’ll keep it brief for now because they’re coming. You don’t know them yet but, in time, you will.

You’ll be able to sense them as well as I can. And when you get that second sense … that extra feeling that you’re not alone, you’ll know why I’m cutting it short.

Suffice it to say that she helped me through more than I ever led her on to believe and I can only wish I’ve returned the favor.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully repay her or thank her, but I want her to know I love her.

If you take nothing else away from this, let it be that I love her. And that I want everyone to know how I feel.
That’s all I can say for now. The ground’s shaking, and I feel them upon me. Gotta run.

--

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