I don’t know how to feel anymore
I suffered an...emotional disconnect? At some point, i just hurt too much, and everything about me reset. I became a different person. To avoid the pain of what was going on, i had to completely remove myself from who I was.
Since that time, i have not cried. I mean, I’ve teared up at a sappy video of a blah blah blah sappy fucking moment, but I haven’t cried like my soul was being crushed. I haven’t cried like a small child who is being covered by a wet blanket made of broken dreams and empty promises. I haven’t cried like my heart will never ever feel good again.
It’s like at some point I cried so fucking hard that I would never again have enough sadness inside me to ever cry like that again.
I broke my feelings.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve been emotionally dead since that time, but I will say that I have spent the last year or so, casually observing my life from the sidelines.
Nothing gives me intense joy. But then again, nothing gives me that all too familiar existential sadness that seemed to crop up now and again for no apparent reason.
I’m kind of a mellow sort of nothing. I feel happiness and sadness and everything in between. But it’s sort of like it’s all very far away and out of focus. The sound is down too low. The subtitles don’t match up. I feel like I’m observing my life the way I watch a foreign movie. Detached because I’m a step behind trying to sink up the text I’m reading with the action going on, the inflection of the actors and the beautiful cinematography.
Something has to give.
And something usually gets lost translation.
I don’t understand all the time. People will talk to me. I’ll see their lips move. I’ll hear words come out of their mouth. I’ll get the general gist of what they are trying to say, but it’s like the time it takes for the words and the intent to make it’s way from my ears to my brain, that some of the words have been redacted. They don’t exist.
Imagine for a moment, that you are reading a paragraph, and that every fifth words has been blacked out. And that the third sentence has turned into a whipsy blue smoke that looks like an elephant. Well, that’s kind of what it’s like to talk to people. It’s even worse when that person is in a position of authority.
I had a psychiatrist tell me that I am so anti authoritarian that I cannot even tell myself what to do. And while that sounds funny, it means that no matter what, if someone tells me what to do, even myself, there is a part of me that automatically rebels. Even if I know the thing in question is for my own good, that part of me will not accept it and will tell me to say no.
So if you combine this weird anti authoritarian hiccup with the verbal dyslexia along with the general lack of feeling you get this person that is floating in a sea. That sea is composed of everything in his life. Once each thing had a regulated place in his world. Responsibilities hovered over him like clouds. Family where distant mountains. Art was the grass that grew under his feet, the trees that gave him shade and constant murders of crows that chased him wherever he went, whether he was happy to see them or incredibly cross.
Now, everything is water. All water. All the same. Everything in my life is floating in this super expansive, never ending water. I feel like a piece of drift wood that has floated out into the middle of an ocean.
Which is to say, that i feel buoyant and free.
My anxiety has always been ruled by emotions. Without emotions there is very little anxiety. That has been the upside to this entire experience. My anxiety has been at an all time low. The lack of emotions and anxiety allowed me to make the move from Cloud to mpls.
I was always terrified to make that move, but then when I did, I literally felt nothing. I did it and I felt nothing. I got here and I felt nothing.
Then one day, like a break in the clouds, the sunlight comes streaming through illuminating everything, making it all so clear and I just bawled. I sat in the basement of the place I was living and I just cried good honest tears. I wasn’t sad or mad or really anything. It was like I had been holding my breath for months and finally let it all out and the only proper response to that sort of relief was to cry my fucking eyes out.
Since then, it’s happened here and there, where this fog of non feeling is breached by good and bad things and I find myself in the throws of elation or despair.
So, I broke myself . And then slowly, I picked up the pieces, and I began putting myself back together. My emotions feel like they have atrophy. They are stiff with ice, like they haven’t been used in some time.
I’m entering a new phase. I’m looking further beyond than I ever have before. I see things that I haven’t seen before. I think in ways that I hadn’t considered before.
I have a sense of peace. A sense of balance. The roller coaster highs and lows that I’ve always experienced have been replaced with more manageable variants. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the chaos.
Without it though, I am accomplishing so much. I haven’t been this productive since art school. And it’s not just a matter of the amount of work that I’m producing. I’m branching out. I’ve recently incorporated digital art into my wheelhouse.
I feel like one of those japanese pots that have been broken but repaired with gold. That sounds corny, but I don’t feel like I have to justify myself to anyone. I can be bold enough to explore everything about myself that I’ve always kept compartmentalized.
I can be sexual and soft and hard and aggressive and nurturing and supportive and everything that makes up what is “traditionally” compartmentalized into (male) and (female).
I don’t feel like those are real things. I don’t feel like I’m one or the other. I don’t really feel like I’m both. I feel like I’m neither. Like those are just two inarticulate words to describe two very small portions of the human experience. I am so much more than that. We are all so much more than that.
This is part of the journey for humanity towards enlightenment. We leave behind our bodies, our concepts about gender, race and even being human, and we embrace universal concepts. We embrace the energy that exists in all things. We are no different from dirt or flowers or gods or clouds. We have the potential to be all things within us, thus we are all things. We are the dirt and the flower and god and the clouds all at once.
We have to stop thinking in polar opposites. The world is not black and white, it is so many colors that we can and cannot see. The world and all its experiences are so beyond these simplistic narratives that always revolve around option A and option B. I want Options A through fucking infinity. Give it all to me baby. i want it all. I want to be everything and nothing at once. I am the buddha.
I would like to live deliciously and I fucking shall.
I’m tired of being afraid of everything. I’m tired of hiding. I will be as brave and bold and audacious as possible. I will spit on your expectations and I will break your barriers and defy your prohibitions.
I am a fully weaponized space wizard with a dragon’s soul. Please do not attempt to adjust your reality. The revolution will not be televised, it will have it’s own youtube channel.
