Emotionally numb

I think I’m broken. My cousin died on saturday morning, I helped my abusive uncle deal with suicidal thoughts, and I’m just not feeling anything. I’m calm while everyone around me is devastated. I’m not sure if it’s the increased medication that’s numbing my feelings or if I’ve taken myself away to that space where I’m disconnected from my emotions again.

I knew I would be. The strong one. The one who holds everyone up. It’s just like when dad died. I was practical and helpful and was there to let people feel how they needed to. All the time, burying my feelings. Locking them up in a treasure chest at the bottom of a giant fish tank.

Sometimes I wonder when it all went wrong. When did I learn that feelings are to be hidden, buried, denied? I can’t pinpoint it. The earliest memory I have of not feeling able to show my feelings is when I was 11 and my grandma Violet was nearing the end of her life. I had been given strict instructions not to go in her room. I wasn’t told she was ill. I wasn’t told that she was dying. One minute she was in my life and the next she was staying at my aunties in a room I wasn’t allowed to enter. I remember defiantly entering that room and being horrified to find my grandmother, laying asleep in a special bed, a skeleton of herself. Nobody needed to tell me. I knew that she would soon die. I had never had a death in my life, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I choked down the emotions and crept downstairs. I didn’t tell anyone I had been in there. I knew not to mention grandma again for fear of upsetting my mum. All this time Violet had been ill, my mother had never shown the torment she must have been going through.
Then my grandma died and I cried.  I’m assuming my family cried. I honestly can’t remember any of them crying. The only time I can remember crying was when I broke into floods of tears at high school.

It’s obvious that at the age of 11, I’d already been taught to hide my emotions. The question is who taught me? Who showed me that emotions weren’t allowed?

When I was 14 I was involved with a couple of friends who pretended to live a different reality. If I ever made my opinions or feelings known then I would be punished. They would place enormous demands on me for time and money. If I spoke out, they would physically hurt me, or lock me in unsafe places. I quickly learnt that I had to put up and shut up. That experience is the first where I can remember being actively punished for showing emotions.

Then came my husband. There are so many things he did to me. So many ways in which he broke me down and crushed me. Emotions weren’t allowed there either. Unless they were on his terms. I could write a book about the damage he did to me.

My experience so far has conditioned me to be excellent at denying my emotions, shutting down and becoming functional. I don’t have to consciously think about it anymore, it’s a physiological response. I start feeling too much emotionally and *poof* I’m a robot.

I understand that switching off my emotions is a response to keep me safe. Though I have removed those toxic people from my life, I’m still trapped by the same response. Not being able to feel is a double edged sword. On one hand I don’t have to sit with the hurtful emotions for long before they disappear. On the other, I don’t feel like I’m participating in life. I feel like I’m just observing and not really feeling the things around me. It also makes me feel broken in some way. I’m not really able to cry. I’m not able to feel pure joy. My emotions are numbed so much that nothing really matters. I think I need to lower my medication but then I’m scared of becoming suicidal again. I’m scared that I will start feeling more and more leading to increased episodes of dissociation.

At the moment, I feel like I’m not really here. Should I stop my medication to see if the feelings come back? So that I can participate? Or will it simply give me the opportunity to sink low enough to end it all.

I’m stuck in the dilemma of feeling and falling or existing and observing – Violet x