And sure, I won't deny it, I am or I can be all of those things. Those descriptions are my shell, my way of masking and hiding the crippling sensitivity that I've spent years beating down and suppressing. And I've succeeded... Oh, how I've succeeded. My reward for this act of supreme willpower and self-training is that unless I actively try to, I feel absolutely nothing.
Well, that's not strictly true - I feel fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, and physical discomforts. Those were never an issue, never something I tried to suppress and so they remained (mostly) untouched. I've learned to conceal them when appropriate, but that's just part of growing older and hopefully wiser. What I don't feel is the things that most other people take for granted - sadness, grief, happiness, joy, need. In grinding to a halt the roller-coaster that I couldn't control, I ended up suspended in the air, neither up nor down.
It's not that I'm incapable of feeling these emotions, I just have to consciously allow myself to experience them. Well, what's wrong with that? you might say... I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Not at first, not for years as I've worked on building this wall. It was a slow process and an inconsistent one. Life would get in the way and tear giant holes in the barricade, but I'm nothing if not determined so on and on I soldiered. When I could retreat behind the wall at will and it held, I rejoiced. If you've ever had the dubious pleasure of listening to a blaring car alarm through the night, then you know the utter bliss when the siren is replaced with blessed silence. At first you don't believe that it's actually over and you keep a wary ear out for the alarm's bleating to restart, but then after a few minutes of silence your shoulders unhunch and you take a deep breath and you convince yourself that yes, it's finally over. It was a bit like that.
Muting the emotions that I couldn't control was a high like no other I had experienced to that point. And then a further revelation that the barricade held. No matter what life threw at me, I could retreat behind the wall and weather it. It was blissful, except I wouldn't let myself get too excited over it; no chinks in the wall.
But you know this doesn't have a happy ending... I wouldn't bother writing about it if it did. Single-mindedness comes with a price. The fatal flaw in my plan was not leaving an escape hatch. Feeling nothing is great when you need to be cold and clinical and analytical in your approach to a problem. It's not so good when you're a human being instead of a robot. Instead of learning how to temper and manage my emotions and prevent them from overrunning me, I imprisoned them with no way out. I wasn't the one behind the wall, my emotions were and I was left on the outside, cold and feeling nothing.
So, what now? Well, I have two options, neither one of which I like much. The safer approach would be to accept that this is how it is. I can continue to live life at low volume, enjoying the calm and trying not to dwell on what I'm missing. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad life. It's calm and restful and probably a lot more stable than it would otherwise be. It's also like living wrapped in layers of cotton.
The other option is to loosen the restraints and see what happens. Let myself feel without reservations or holding back. How bad can it be? Unspeakably bad, actually. As bad as it was before I did all this work to fix myself. Knowing what I know of my past struggles, this isn't an option that I'm eager to pick and yet is it worth a try?
What's holding me back from deciding on a course of action is not knowing the answer to this question... Can I learn to control my emotions a little at a time or will all my work of the last decade come crumbling down taking me with it?
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