We have all dreamt of turning it off. There are endless times throughout our lives when we want nothing more than to switch off our feelings. We want nothing more than to make it stop, all the hurt, the pain, the anger, the shame, just all of it. We reach a point where it hurts so bad. It gets so loud up there that all we want is for it to go away. Even if that means erasing the good along with the bad, it just isn’t worth it anymore. The bad far outweighs the good, and we cannot take it anymore. Feeling nothing is so much better than feeling everything, right?
Wrong!
All my life I have wanted nothing more than to turn it off, to feel nothing. My childhood was rough, and so I learned early in life how to push things away. I was a master at dissociation and so I ran from everything and everyone. I tuned it all out and created this special place in my mind where I would go to get away from it all. It happened so often that it stopped being an escape and started becoming my home. I lived way more in my head than I ever did in the real world and I lived way more by myself than with others. Even when I was surrounded by so many people, I felt secluded. For so long, I felt so proud of myself for being so good at feeling good. Or so I thought.
I will not lie and say that I was not aware that numbing myself and losing the ability to feel the bad meant losing the good along with it. But I also had no idea what I was signing up for. We always hear that the good cannot exist without the bad but what I was never told, was that “feeling nothing is a feeling, and it’s the worst feeling ever”. I used to think that turning it off would mean that it would all just go away. I thought I would be in this euphoric state of peace, but instead it felt like I was stuck in limbo.
There was no peace, no good or bad. There was just emptiness. An emptiness so physical, I could feel a hole where my heart used to be. Hollowness so real you could fall right through it. It felt like I was flatlining. I could no longer feel my heartbeat to the point where sometimes I would have to place my hand on my chest just to make sure I was still alive.
The thing is, it was not like the vampire diaries. It did not happen in an instant. It took years for me to “turn it off”, and so it took years for me to realize where I was headed. By the time I realized what was happening, I was too far gone. I had successfully managed to switch off my feelings along with my heart. I was lost in limbo.
The Realization:
The good news was that I discovered that the human heart is very impressionable. It is malleable, fragile, and magnificent. My heart was hidden away in a dark corner; rusty, forgotten, and out of practice. But it wasn’t dead. I wasn’t dead. And so, it wasn’t too late.
When I realized how awful feeling nothing really is I came to appreciate the great gift of feeling. I came to understand that feeling everything is a blessing, not a burden. I finally realized that experiencing the multitude of emotions our souls and human experiences have to offer is a miracle and something to run towards not run away from.
It was not an easy journey to bring myself back to life, to dust off my heart, and put it back into play. I experienced something heartbreaking but it broke my heart open. It jumpstarted it. It brought me back to life and I am so grateful because until I had my heart broken, I wasn’t sure I had one.
Ever since then, every emotion, every experience, and every feeling good and especially bad has been a blessing. Every feeling means that I am still lucky enough to be alive. Each heartache means I am gifted with a beating heart. Every human emotion means that I am still in touch with my humanity. & every experience is a gift from god.