Numb

1. deprived of physical sensation or the ability to move.
2. manifesting or resembling numbness.
3. incapable of action or of feeling emotion; enervated; prostrate.
4. lacking or deficient in emotion or feeling; indifferent.


I was driving back to campus in my truck tonight, freezing cold, staring out my front windshield when I suddenly realized I was actually driving. I had been sitting there watching life go by me at 60 MPH not really paying attention. It was as if I was watching a movie but then realized it was not a movie but actually my life. I gave the steering wheel a little nudge to the right and the truck responded and I pulled into the right lane. I noticed that I had not payed attention to driving until this moment. I had somehow made it through seven intersections and had pulled onto two different roads without even noticing. I was thinking constantly but thinking nothing at the same time, I knew I had things continuously going through my head but could not recall a single thought that I had in the last five minutes. I felt so numb to life.

I have let this numbness carry into every part of my life. I have been taking life as it comes the past month or so and have not really been excited or sad but always.........sitting there: in the moment but not really into the moment. I am going through my daily and weekly actions without any emotion or excitement. I have not connected with anyone on a deep emotional level in a while. Probably because I have not made time to see the people I am closest to because I don’t have time and the spare time I do have I spend in this numbness. I have moved everything I own into my basement and as a result hardly ever see my roommates. Correction: I see one of my roommates all the time but since I am not an animated War Hammer character on the seventeen inch screen in front of him, I deserve no attention, not even a hello apparently. I don't get the kind of personal time I am really wanting and needing with my fiancée because we both are so busy and have scheduled our lives so completely but at conflicting times. This requires squeezing each other in the margins of our lives if we can see each other at all. I have taken about three pages worth of notes in the past few weeks in class because I rarely am there physically and if I am then I am not there mentally. I am not meeting with my mentor because I feel like he is too busy for me and the time I do see him there is seems to be an unwritten agenda and a certain level of fakeness that honestly hurts for me to think about. I find myself wanting to do things but time comes and goes and I don’t do any of them because my ambition and emotion in life has not been there. I usually get to the end of my day and think, "What did I do today?"

I must be clear in saying it is not that I have felt no emotion at all in the past month. I have laughed, been angry and sad, made jokes, been loud and excited, done things with people, been scared, etc. However, I am saying that I have been numb to life to the point where I feel like I am not really even living my life. It is simply playing on a 360 degree screen around me. I am going through life feeling like I am waiting on something to happen to me like getting a new job, or this semester ending, or marriage before I will experience its fullness again. I know if I let them, these things will come and go with the same numbness.

The good news is that I know what it is that will wake me up. I know there is only one thing that can drive me to live life to the fullest. I know that I have pulled away from the one thing that gives my life purpose and meaning and I have tried making something out of my life on my own. I have not done this intentionally but I have also not intentionally chased after that which I am made to be. If I want to live life and live it to the full I must change.