I’m a fiercely independent person that has learned through hardship that doing everything myself is the basically the only way to get anything done. This is an especially difficult personality trait when you are in my situation – living off disability because of a body that’s constantly betraying me – and being forced to depend on others just to merely exist.
I’d like to think that when it comes to most things I am capable of taking care of myself and asking for help is something I just don’t do. This includes seeking therapy for any emotional distress I may be going through. In fact in 35 years I never have felt the need. But for the past two or three years I’ve been… numb, empty, like all I am doing is going through the motions. I’ve accomplished some insane things in this time – I wrote and published three books, I started eight separate blogs, I started a weekly comic, and moved on from having to completely start my life over again. Hell, I even took on a lover. And through all this I feel…. not much.
I’ve been blaming this on the fact the only other serious relationship I was ever in was with a narcissist and I went through all the highs and lows of that – the love bombing, the trauma bonding, the gas lighting, the echoism, and I figured being as dysfunctional as it was it also go me hooked on the drama like a drug. Sure, a new relationship was going to feel different, more tame, downright boring, but that’s good, isn’t it?
I struggled with this for months, almost a year at this point. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach, I don’t feel infatuated, I have no desire or need to be in constant contact. Is this because I’m just getting used to a new normal or is it because I lack chemistry with this one? Having nothing to compare it to I had no idea until I realized just a couple weeks ago that this wasn’t a relationship problem – it was a me problem.
Because it’s not just the relationship that’s failing to keep my attention – it’s everything. I remember when my narc ex broke up with me. I lost literally everything I’d built up in my life – my home, my farm, my business, my local friends, my pets, the person I thought I’d be spending my life with – fucking everything. And you’d think this might make someone numb but it didn’t. I picked myself up and went out into the world and I had fun. I hiked into the woods, I explored abandoned buildings, I strolled through historic cemeteries, I drove up Mount Washington’s death road in a fucking Prius. And I felt alive for the first time in my life. I was free.
But then the adrenaline burned off and I was left with the bleak reality of my existence. I was living at home, out of my parent’s basement, in a severely hoarded house that did not have room for me anymore. I was living off disability because of numerous chronic health problems and all of a sudden I felt them all hit me at once like an avalanche of bricks. My body couldn’t take my adventuring anymore and I was left isolated and depressed.
That’s when the numb crept in. I’d been numb to the idea of love (even walling myself off from having feelings for pets – ‘least they be taken away like everything else in my life) but this is when it started to envelope everything else. It took more and more risk to feel the same highs I felt initially until I didn’t feel it at all.
I was trying to amend this situation by getting a romantic partner but the more I tried the less I felt. I did have a house bunny during this entire time, Oliver, my free roaming constant companion who I loved in an intellectual way… I admired his smarts, his attitude, his intensely stubborn nature, and hugged him often but there was a disconnect there. I didn’t feel the warm fuzzies I usually did with a special pet. It’s be literally years before I started to feel just the tiniest hint of that again… two months later he died suddenly and without warning. My walls went up again.
It’s been a few months. As my romantic partner wants more from me I find myself running away, believing it’s cruel to lead him on. I care about him and enjoy spending time with him but I am not sure anyone can reach this ice queen at the moment.
As I try to figure this out the people at the social security have decided at random I have improved enough to work and have tossed me off disability. Mind you my health has been so bad this past year that just keeping this one romantic prospect has been almost impossible. 75% of the time my once weekly visits result in me paying for them dearly the rest of the week, so how I’m supposed to work if I can’t even maintain a part time boyfriend is well beyond me. Never mind I’m immunocompromised and we’re living in the middle of a fucking pandemic. But yeah! Why not find “gainful employment” right now?
I should be freaking out. The appeal is in January where I get to plead my case. If they deny me I’m fucked. I know I can’t sustain a normal job and not having health insurance or an income would mean the end to having pets, being able to travel, and going to visit my lover. It’ll be really really fucking bad for me.
But what do I feel? Intellectually I feel anger at having to justify my existence. But beyond that? Nothing. And that’s the whole point of numbness isn’t it? To protect the self from more loss, to survive.
I only learned recently that emotional numbness is a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder. All these years I have been yelling, “Who me? Trauma? I haven’t gone through any of that…” but looking back on my life… and all the losses and obsticles and bullshit I have had to go through just to end up here – in my mother’s basement, childless and career-free at the age of 35 – that’s not just trauma it’s years of it. Chronically. Until I just don’t feel anymore.
So here’s a hard lesson for someone like me. Sometimes you need to ask for help. And I’m ready. I’m ready to make my first visit to a therapist. Only one problem. I need to win that appeal. Or else I won’t have the insurance to do so and I will continue living, having lost even more, just being numb to the world until what? Things magically get better?
I’m so fucking lost.