Stickiness/Blankness

Why does nothing stick?

I sobbed loudly and violently after the phone call; my husband tried to console me but I stood up proclaiming that I don’t want to be sad, I won’t be sad as if I could defy my heart. I just started doing “stuff” cleaning, gaming, cooking, whatever. But the tears would come eventually, my emotional dam breaking open and needing to be quickly repaired. Nights were the worst. Then after a week, nothing. Nothing until I’m suddenly angry at the world, frustrated, and give a friend, or my husband, or my ex the third degree for something I realize I don’t care about after the fact. After? I act like nothing happened. They bring it up later and I say it was really no big deal and sorry I overreacted.

True sadness pushed down, ignored, and left to fester comes out as anger and ardor, frustration and rage in me. I’m okay with feeling sad! I cry at movies and when certain things happen. Yet, the kind of sadness that feels like it threatens your very existence as a person, your identity, the kind that you know will change you forever. I can’t let myself feel that. I’d rather be angry and disappointed about the pettiest shit. I’d rather feel furious that someone left trash on the ground outside or angry that a job I didn’t want didn’t get back to me.

Truth be told, my emotions aren’t real to me in the same way my thoughts are. They mostly feel like costuming or set dressing on the being that is me. Outside of the love I have for a very few select people every other emotion feels fleeting and like a ghost or vapor; something to be played with but not hung onto. That’s why I can turn them off if I concentrate a bit. Not forever, but for a little while I can just not. . .feel. I’ve stopped caring about people this way, refused to enjoy stuff because I was mad about something this way, and even stamped down nerves by saying “I’m not gonna feel that”. Anger and love are the only things I carry with me. Everything else I move past quickly and with ease and expect others to do the same.

Outwardly, I’m a very emotional person. I’m expressive, I’m demonstrative, I can swing from being serious to crass in .5 seconds. Yet I feel like none of it is actually and truly affecting me. Am I feeling my feelings or just having them? I analyze them in my head and dissect myself like a character in a play searching for possible causes and triggers. “Yes, this reason will do nicely for the internal narrative I have of myself” and decide that’s why it happened and move on. I was shocked when I found out others don’t do the same. The discovery happened when I was much younger and realized that some people get into their feelings. They don’t want to move on, they want to luxuriate in them whether or not they are good or bad.

I just want to actually grieve the loss of this relationship. It went on for ten years, there were high points and low points and everything in between. He was there for my bachelors graduation and my masters conferment. He was there when I took a big risk career wise and failed miserably. I want to be in touch with the ways in which my heart broke into a million pieces and how I felt like I truly lost a piece of me. I want to mourn the fact that everything is different now. But I can’t. All I feel is blank when I try to think about it. Not neutral like I usually feel, just

blank