comfortably numb
"I can't explain. You would not understand. This is not how I am. I have become comfortably numb." - Pink FloydI've half-written lots of posts this week that haven't made it onto the blog. Thoughts have suddenly flown into my head and left almost as swiftly. I seem to have little grasp on what's inside my head and an inability to focus or concentrate on my own musings.I guess this is what it's like to feel numb.I shed no tears at my grandma's funeral yesterday. I felt just a flutter of sadness as I heard my wife's name spoken by my brother during the eulogy. The only mild extreme of emotion I felt was when I chuckled as my son put his dummy in my mouth and told me to go to sleep during the service.I fear I have an incapacity to feel anything deeply right now.You can get drugs to make you feel this way: herbal remedies can help bring calmness; Valium can go someway towards blocking the pain of grief; marajuana can even chill you out. But I think that sometimes our own incredible bodies dish out all the chemicals we need to deal with our mental pain.Somehow I've shut down.I'm neither enjoying nor disliking the experience but the 'drug' is not something I would ever choose to buy. I'm left without any strength of feeling, good or bad. But then I guess this sensation might be some sort of emotional equilibrium. A kind of balancing of satisfaction and suffering that has left me bereft of either pleasure or profuse pain, drive or deep depression, humour or heavy unhappiness.Perhaps it has been brought on by being back in the home I grew up in as a child. Maybe I'm at a precipice looking back at the life I've lived so far and down into the unknown abyss of my future. I'm unable to step back but, for now, I also lack the enthusiasm to take a leap.But given the suffering I've felt for so long, I guess I'll take this mild form of natural anaesthesia for now. After all, what other choice do I have?"I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown. The dream is gone. And I have become comfortably numb." - Pink Floyd