Numb — WF.

It is with not-so-humble experience that I look down at my sore hands and truly feel the cold in my bones, the ache in my joints as I attempt to move enough blood through my fingers and produce anything that’s worthy enough of displaying on a public forum like post-it notes stapled to my forehead.

Today, I am fifteen years sober. Sober from the life I wish I could have, and the feelings I wish I could deflate in any sort of capacity that conjures a contemptuous, if not downright passable, member of a society that deflects and angers. A poison seeps through me. I can feel it pounding in my jugular vein, stretching across the tendons behind my eyeballs, and twisting up my shoulders to produce what has to be one of the most commonly uncomfortable postures known to mankind.

It’s with disdain that I watch others gain numbness.

Whether or not I’m better off because I am forced to live on this side of the fence, in full view of the world's people finding moment after moment of escape, is not something I can yet decide.

I lay in bed, eyes strung up and open like theater stage curtains without pull-chords, gazing at and through everything in front of my face. Wonder, do I ever, what it would feel like to numb it all, if only for a moment.

Many that live a life without the act of drugs or drink will tell you, there isn’t a day that goes by in which the idea of that salvation doesn’t make one salivate. No matter how many years of strength you’ve built your current structure upon, there is never a dune without a tide, beating away at the ground beneath all of your treasured belongings.

It is not easy to feel the chill. Hot, cold, sweaty, and in desperate need to be satiated. Harder yet, is to force those frozen bones to move. If I possessed the spirit of an ignorant man or the energy of a functional abuser, none of this may feel as torturous. Yet, the crater in my chest grows and the front of my shoulders close ground on one another until I wake in an icy stupor, curled up and weak in all definitions that matter in this scenario.

And I fight. Starved for a chance to see the other side of a battle all the while seeing so few members of my family or any dawning the horizon brandishing my colors. Though I may not always stand alone, a solitary disguise is all I can manage to dress myself in, in the morning, at night, to the job I can’t seem to keep. There’s a look, a glance, a scare, on the bus to wherever, wherein I am outed as an outsider, and they are so used to folks quivering in their lack of notice that I can feel it when they are shocked by my attention.

A jealousy boils, nearing the rim, as La Reine uses her rightful ability to self-medicate to achievement numbness in hopes of putting her head down on the pillow at night and find sanctuary in slumber. The back of my tongue tastes bitter. Especially when we’re divided.

Knowing, all the while, that I forfeit my escape route as a product of my own vices, while she has yet to reach the peak of damnation. Damned to be present. Damned to be aware. Damned to be awake. It is over great distances that I stretch and reach with all my might to sense salvation in the warmth of her skin, only to be swatted and pushed away as if it wasn’t my single greatest hope of holding on to something grand enough to stay living for. Falling, I am dizzied by the radical path towards the earth that my being is taking, without conscious understanding that the view from up this high may be the single most beautiful thing I have, or ever, will play witness to.

Across a field or three, an inept grandmother begins to lose her grip on reality. Slowly, the sand she used to frame her memories is eroding and something sinister inside of me can’t help but wish the same upon myself. Lucky, is a word that crept from the shadowy corner of my mind, stealing the spotlight on the stage as if this was some kind of horrid open mic night. Where did my comically long hook go? Worse yet, when I find it, my hands are gone, and I grow furious at my inability to just grab it and remove the gremlin from the stage.

There is nothing that causes more fear for me than not being able to control my thought patterns, listen to them all — or ideally a singular voice — at once, and articulate those vicious noises into sentences that convey everything, or something, that I’m feeling. Lately, the noxious meandering of human civilization has done so much damage to my spirit. Sapped, I crawl into a hole and await the end of the stampede, just outside of the only way in or out of this tiny secluded space, to suspend its trample. However, there has been no let-up. Once in a while, my ears are attuned to the sound of the thunderous footsteps and the mind plays tricks, thinking that things may be on the slowdown. Yet, a new wave arrives. Larger groups join in, yet. And all I want is to numb it.

Numb.

A piercing screech can be numbed to the volume where a sane human being can process the noises. Perhaps that painful pinch that is attempting to collapse your skull with force on either temple is covering up real words, thoughts, emotions, and it all hurts to much to read them or hear them with clarity.

What are they saying?
What do they want?
For fuck’s sake,
What do you want?!

...

If only I could numb myself enough to let them say their piece, perhaps then I would find peace.

Use it to sleep, to control the stream of thinking, feeling, and pain. What I miss the most about my relationship with numbness is how safe I felt when it arrived. Home without it feels like an echo chamber, and there isn’t a pair of earplugs to be found. Every step, a boom. Every cry, lightning. Every scream, feels like the death of me.

The colder my fingers get, the harder it is to hold them under hot water. Dishes be damned, I just want to wash the dirt from under my fingernails.