What to Do when You STOP Feeling?

Someday we are going to wake up in an alternate reality where horrible life is NOT a competition. In that reality when someone expresses how terrible their life is, the response is an empathetic nod rather than ‘Oh, my life is more terrible.’ Someday we are going to realise that it’s absolutely okay to have a time in which life seems and feels good. It's absolutely okay to not accept the misery 'as what life is' or 'normal' and want better for ourselves.

We might have a lot of time to kill till that day comes, so I am going to share an experience.

Once upon a time I wanted to die, from the ages of eight to thirteen. To make you understand my commitment to the act of dying, let me mention that I used to believe then that if I ask god something from my heart, then he'll consider fulfilling it. I prayed to die on my bad days. I prayed to die on my good days including birthdays. Because, why will anyone listen to a prayer that’s forgotten when the situation changes? That’s how the little me thought.

Situations changed when I turned fourteen. They changed so drastically that I assumed my attitude towards life should change as well. Although I continued to think about dying, I stopped praying for it. I locked my thoughts and desire away, tried to embrace the physical reality around me. Ten years passed. I turned into an adult, legally speaking. I wasn’t prepared for adulthood. I wasn’t prepared to look at my romantic relationships from the lens of my parents’ marriage. I wasn’t prepared to see me as a genetic product of families I was born into. I didn’t grow up with role models, I grew up listing what not to be in my mind only to realise I am exactly that. Not by choice. That’s when my reality fell apart. That’s when I stopped myself from feeling anything anymore. I was not in sync with who I had become.

This was a crucial moment. Most of the people I talked to told me – accept yourself as you are. That seemed like a sound advice. But, it led to more questions – What was I? Who was I? Do I have no control over the person I am? Was my entire existence already written when I was a zygote? Was I to accept myself as a confused being who had no idea about who she is? Was I to accept I am someone I don’t like? Everyone around me talked of self-love, and I was there asking, what a shit concept is that?

Like I mentioned above, my existence was falling apart around me. I shut my emotions. Believe it or not, I found an ‘Off’ switch for feelings. For some days, I stayed that way. What I forgot was there was an anomaly in my circuit that others might not have. I had survived a deadly disease (leukemia) that had a physical manifestation. I knew, on a physical level, what happens when symptoms are ignored or don’t align in a way for disease to be detected. I knew that symptoms have to reach a certain stage for a disease to be diagnosed. Above all, I knew that treatment (chemotherapy) is/can be more painful than the symptoms but choosing not to get treated is foolishness.

So, I turned the switch for my feelings back on. I talked to many people again. When I told them that I cannot go about my day as I used to, they advised me to fake it till I make it. This is when I realised that I am in this crisis because I have faked over ten years of my life hoping someday to make it. I didn’t want to do it anymore. They said, then you’ll keep suffering. Well, morphine doesn’t kill the pain, it gives us the illusion that it’s gone. I know this because I was injected with morphine when chemotherapy led to the swelling in my throat and many painful ulcers. I didn’t feel the pain but I couldn’t eat.

At one point I assumed that cutting people off would be the safest thing to do, I wouldn’t have to feel like I am talking to a wall. I am grateful for the conversations that made me feel heard. However talking to walls was useful too. To hear what sounds silly but know that it’s not helped me realise why people don’t understand me. So, in a way, I ended up exploiting people as walls before I went to the person who made me feel heard in order to state my observations out loud hoping his insights will help me think further, get better.

I spent a lot of time thinking about myself. The questions that bothered me couldn’t possibly have answers outside. Faking my life, not addressing the root of my crisis, was blocking me from diving deeper within me. So, I addressed it. I initiated ugly conversations with my parents multiple times. It took numerous attempts to explain that as an eight year old I wanted to die. I had assumed that I wanted them to understand the gravity of the situation in my head or that I wanted them to be guilty and somehow make it upto me.

Source: kendavis.com

When I realised, for the most part, I am still talking to walls it hit me that I am not upset with them, I am upset because I am unable to forgive my younger self. I am upset that I betrayed myself. I am upset that I was silent when I felt so much. I am upset that I didn’t confront them because I felt they would disown me or stop loving me. I tried to become what I assumed was a 'perfect' daughter (thank you visual and verbal representation and intergenerational convention and social behaviours that need no direct saying for the picture of ‘perfect’ to be formed in my head). I am upset that I was a rat running on a mill. People changed, I built new relationships. Yet, in every cycle I could find a moment when I had betrayed myself terribly to be accepted by others. 

Like I said, self-love (aka retail therapy, for the most part) felt like a shit concept. Applying lipstick uplifted my face not my mind. Getting a haircut could no longer help me feel control. Buying books didn’t cheer me up. I hated travelling. The physical world stopped mattering when I was not in sync with what was going on inside me.

I opened floodgates of pain and suffering. I chose the metaphorical chemotherapy. I am still undergoing the treatment. I know it is working because I no longer fill the pages of my diary with words like void, empty, nothing. I know I am getting better because when I read what I wrote almost a year ago, I feel joy. I feel joy of not feeling all those things so dominantly. Moreover, I broke the loop I was living in (yet I know I have to be conscious of not falling into it again, mark everything I do, check up on myself now and then). I fondly called it getting out of hell where I was reliving my sin – the sin of self-betrayal.

The end.

As for the questions that haunted me. Well, as a kid I was scared of continuing the genetic-excuse of detachment. I know for a fact that I’d not do it willingly because I have been on its receiving end. While I cannot control how others feel, I won't want to consciously choose repeating that what I have suffered from. There are seven billion people in the world, I cannot be the only misfit (if I have to call myself that). But, I definitely won’t find anyone if I live in a shell, if I don’t expose myself. I might not control every event in my life, but I have the agency to choose how to react – be comfortable in not feeling it or be curious to learn more about myself or something else?

I know it’s considered important to accept ourselves as we are. I am not sure I am quite there in understanding what it means. What does it mean? What do we do after we accept? How do we grow? Somehow, I have begun thinking that the moment we accept ourselves, the moment we say - this is me – that’s the moment we stop ourselves from understanding who we are. I hope everyone reaches a point where they ask, ‘Who am I?’ I hope even more that they don’t find a satisfying answer to it.

But let’s wait till we stop pretending that being miserable is cool. Let’s wait till we stop believing that not feeling anything is normal. Let’s wait till we stop complaining about society and see ourselves as the society or at least a part of it. Let’s just wait till we stop using judgmental words – right/wrong, correct/incorrect or even strong/weak. Let’s just wait till humankind kills itself over these and other living entities live happily ever after without us exploiting and abusing them.

Let’s just wait to care about ourselves. Let’s simply wait because we love inaction. 

Ps. As much as not feeling is an unconscious personal choice and survival mechanism, it can manifest as many mental illnesses. It's important to ask for help.