Numb

“deprived of physical sensation or the ability to move, manifesting or resembling numbness: a numb sensation, incapable of action or of feeling emotion, lacking or deficient in emotion or feeling; indifferent”

Oxford Dictionary

“The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert“

“It hurts until it doesn’t. You think it’s going to break you, but it won’t. You may not sleep as well at night, but you will be fine. Numb, but numb and fine are the same.”
― Nitya Prakash

“There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything else has ended and nothing else can ever begin.”

― Robin Hobb, Fool’s Assassin

If you’ve ever felt emotionally numb before, you know it’s a feeling that’s difficult to put into words. Numbness literally means unable to think, feel, or react normally — it’s not anger or confusion or even sadness, but simply a lack of emotion.

“I am fine.”

This has been my response to those around me. Of course I am fine. I have written this blog, and the cathartic experience of letting it all out there has dealt with the trauma.

“Yes, I am fine!”

Until I realised that lately, ‘fine’ is ‘numb’, and that I am not fine.

I opened the shower tap and stepped under the soft waterfall, expecting the heat to heal my tired, heavy muscles, tight from stress and emotional turmoil. I turned around to admire the familiar, breathtaking view from my (once) beautiful palace’s guestroom. And I think of how now, I am only a visitor to this amazing feat of a building we built. The thoughts take control of my heart, soul and mind. I am overwhelmed. I look around and see everything. The objects and fittings around me all have significance: I chose them carefully with the conception of this dwelling. And my thoughts dwell on how I spent time all alone in this room and bathroom two years ago. And the tears join the waterfall sliding down my body, disappearing into the drain.

I cannot stop crying. I am numb. Drained. Cleansed, but definitely not fine.

Today I think of this experience a few days ago, and realise that I have not dealt with my trauma. I feel like I now have to shout it out at the top of the highest mountain; that I need to tell everybody who has had an influence on my life, since that drowning-in-the-mud moment almost three years ago, the absolute truth. I need to be vulnerable and sad and happy and fragile and strong all simultaneously in order to move on and stop the waterfall of tears. So this is what I am going to do and need to do to set myself and those around me free. It all came to me in a dream:

In my dream I desperately reach out to my love, but he turns around and walks away. I shout for help, but he can’t hear me anymore for he is now too far away. I linger, try again and again, but to no avail. I close the door and fall to the ground. The room is empty, quiet and dark. I pray for light and love and somebody to save me from this darkness……

From the darkness letters start raining softly on me, over me, slowly falling next to me. They enter my veins and start swimming upstream into my bloody heart. The words are beautiful, they soothe my soul, and fill my empty heart . I feel envigorated, excited, and my heart bursts open exposing and freeing my own words. Words flow from my heart into the liminal space of my journey to healing. My blog is born. Early morning messages from afar calms my heart, and I lose myself in them. I look into the eyes from which they came from a distance and my heart is taken.

As my dream continues, the words dry up, and I am left alone again……..

I desperately shout out at my love, he returns and I whisper sweet words into his ears, I even offer my body to him to attempt to win his love back. He acknowledges me and enters the room, caresses my body, but then walks out the door into the arms of another. I turn the key slowly, shutting him out.

I search all around the room, slowly moving to the light visible through the window. There is a beautiful, young man outside the window and he asks to come inside. We do not talk much, but his wonderful soul makes me feel less lonely as he occasionally softly visits my body; but he does not offer me any words. I still feel lonely, and reach up to the ceiling to catch the words that filled my veins….but they are gone, and the heart that wrote them is too far away; offering himself to a beautiful creature I cannot compare with.

I am lonely, but I am fine.

The room lightens up, and from a small window I did not notice was there before, a bright light enters. It jumps from left to right, up and down, all around my head, and makes me laugh and smile. The creator of this light offers everything: words, kisses, caresses, exciting conversations, sexy thoughts…..and I am hooked. He teases and whispers and touches me in a way nobody has dared before. He eventually rides into the room in his shining armor, picks me up and almost saves me from the dark room I am trapped in. I am happy and my room lights up brightly….. until the knight on his white horse falls off, taking me with him as we fall onto the ground. As he gets up and dusts himself before leaving the room, I realise that it has turned dark again.

I am lonely, but I am fine.

My broken heart bleeds freely, and as I am about to try and scoop up the blood from the floor, it happens: my love violently breaks down the door and enters the room: transformed. He offers me everything. Words, his heart, his belongings. But I cannot find the key to the door…. I have to unlock the door in order for him to enter through it and into my heart. I desperately grasp around on the floor, but all I can feel is the warm blood……I cannot find the key.

I am lonely, but I am fine.

Numb.

The dream of my subconscious is vivid and painfully true. How utterly amazing is the hidden mind, trying to figure it all out when we are asleep. And here I am, still writing this blog: grasping in the dark room in order to find myself and the closure I need. I hope that the men and lovers in my dream forgive me for sharing our encounters with the world. But I also wish, secretly, that I am, or was in their dreams.

I still think about the ‘creator’ of my words. Every single day. The soul that connected with mine, and opened up the sluices to my heart and these words.

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

T. E. Lawrence