Close your eyes. Feel into your body. Where do you feel it? Does it feel small and powerful or big and insubstantial? Is it warm? Is it cold? Does it feel light or heavy? Does it have a shape? A size? A smell? A texture?

I am on my bed doing my nightly meditation ritual. I feel nothing.

What do you feel when you connect to yourself?

It has been almost a year since my relapse. Since the light once again gave over to the darkness and I was thrust into a land of tests, meds and truth. I am sitting with a friend in a coffee shop trying to explain to her my lack of feeling. How everything feels the same. No high highs and no low lows. How I can’t tell when I need to pee or when my body is hungry. How I’m able to take decisions but lack guidance from my intuition. How I feel like a shell of the person I used to be.

What have you done to explore how to re-connect to yourself?

I am sitting at my desk getting ready to write. I look for the words inside of me, but nothing comes out. I attempt to explore my thoughts and feelings but am met with blankness. I write what I know, but it doesn’t come from that quiet place. From the godliness.

“Maybe you should write about that. I guarantee you that other people have been through this too. We all numb ourselves. We’re a society of self-numbers. Maybe you’ll get some insight from others.”

I put pen to paper and attempt to capture the uncapturable.

Where does feeling come from?

I am sitting in my apartment in New York reading a book about the Virgin of Guadalupe. I hear a voice whisper to take it easy, to be kind to myself. It is the first time I hear this voice. It feels like it’s coming from inside me, but also feels “other”. I take a deep breath. I embrace it.

When you put your hand on your heart do you feel gratitude?

I am talking to my brother about anxiety. He asks me if I have felt this way the entire time or if it has resurfaced. I halt. I don’t have the answer. I am not able to separate the “then” from the “now”. It all feels too much. I take his hand. Somehow, it feels less much.

“If you only let yourself feel this much pain, you only feel this much happiness. If you don’t allow yourself to feel sad, you never feel happy,” she gestures, mimicking a spectrum.

“I had a dream that I really needed to pee. It woke me up. When I got up there wasn’t really much pee there, but the sensation was so strong that it got me to get out of bed.”

“Maybe explore that. The dreamworld is your subconscious mind so maybe it’s telling you something.”

I am lying on the ground in my Somatic Experiencing class. The teacher tells me to roll from the right to the left and to keep my arms extended as I do it. I mimic her gestures. My body is moving but my mind is numb. I redo that movement, but the result is similar.

“Do you feel more mind active?”

“I feel more mental. I am able to reason things and make decisions, but I never know if they’re the “right” ones. There is nothing in me that differentiates one thing from another except the vision I have in my head of how things “should” be, what makes the most sense.”

“Do you feel that labeling things helps or hurts?”

“Helps to a certain extent because everybody feels the same thing, but maybe hurts more.”

I am on the phone with my cousin in Canada. She tells me that the doctor has just changed her ADHD medication and that it has had some side effects on her. She talks to me about the movies and the series she cannot watch because it triggers her anxiety. We laugh a little at our conditions, but it is a sad laugh.

“When I feel claustrophobic or anxious I start to use movement as a way of getting through it. I dance, do yoga or even just stretch. I feel it move. Not disappear, but like move somewhere else.”

I want to ask her what “it” is, but I’m too shy.

“What about your likes and dislikes, do you feel that?”

I respond a resounding “no.”

“But you knew you didn’t like this, right?” she points to the matcha on the table.

“Yes.”

“So were you able to feel that?”

I want to tell her that feelings aren’t so black and white. That I can know something tastes bad, but not feel inside that it tastes bad. That I have sense-power but that it is muted.

“You know where you are right now is really special. You are able to see yourself without getting lost in it. Maybe there is a reason for you being in this position. Maybe you are meant to use it.”

I nod slightly but keep my gaze cast downward.

“What do you feel writing does in that process. How are you able to express yourself through writing?”

“Sometimes, it’s rare, but I’ll be analyzing something in a written piece and things will suddenly make sense. They’ll click together and I know I’ve accessed that part of me.”

“So, if writing is an exploration of your emotions is writing like a bridge for tapping into them?”

“You could say that.”

I think back on the past few months and wonder if I have written anything from the inside place. I wonder if there’s anything I could have done differently. If there was a moment or several moments where I could have captured this “non-feeling” before it began. If it’s physical or mental. If it really is, as my doctor says, a matter of time.

“Do you miss feeling sad?”

“Yes. Without sadness you are not able to feel happy. Feeling sad makes you whole.”  

Numbly yours,

Girl With One Earring