Blank

I’m usually pretty in touch with my emotions.

I feel them way more deeply than I want to sometimes. I can typically express them, explain them, analyze them, self-diagnose where they’re coming from, and sometimes even self-counsel on what to do next. Not that that’s a good thing, necessarily. When I’m my own one-woman therapy center, I tend to get stuck in a confirmation-biased echo chamber that no amount of reading or psychology coursework can fix.

People need other people to offer different perspectives. Different ways to think about and interpret things. We need to hear voices that are coming from outside our own heads.

I know all of this.

I’ve just been having a hard time doing anything about it lately.

It’s tough to describe, but I’ve been experiencing a lack of emotion these past couple of weeks. Maybe it’s been longer than that. I remember, after coming back from vacation and then immediately going on a work trip in June, I spent a few weeks in “safe mode,” repairing and rebooting from too much activity. Too much time being “on.” Then things started getting more strained at home, and I began questioning what I wanted for my life, my family, myself. Then Roe v. Wade fell, and not only was I questioning, but I was also terrified. Maybe I’ve been caught in a string of so many heightened emotions, for such a long period of time, that my circuits have overloaded? Maybe I was feeling so much, that as a self-defense mechanism, I now can’t feel anything at all?

It’s different than numbness, though. To me, numbness feels like moving through pudding. Everything is slow, muddled. Emotions are perceptible, but almost from an out-of-body perspective. There’s sadness or frustration, but it’s not mine. It’s just floating around out there somewhere. What I’m feeling right now isn’t that. It’s almost…almost like the absence of feeling, if that makes any sense. It’s silence. Emptiness. I can’t name anything. I’m not angry, or sad, or disappointed, or depressed, or anxious. Things that usually get me upset are totally neutral. I’m non-reactive.

I’m blank.

I’ve been doing my self-identity script writing for 12 days now. (Assuming I actually do it today.) You’re supposed to “feel into” the story you’re writing for yourself so that you manifest it into being. It’s kind of like a “fake it till you make it” thing, but with a positive psychology spin to it. The more you can imagine yourself achieving or living the life you want, the more likely you are to recognize and pursue opportunities to make it happen. Self-fulfilling prophecy type stuff, maybe?

Anyway, I’ve got nothing when I write it. I can picture the scenes I’m describing. An old house I’m renovating somewhere in a state where women’s bodies aren’t persecuted, in a quiet neighborhood surrounded by nature, with friends for the kids to play with, and maybe even friends for me, too. I intellectually understand the feelings I’m wishing myself to have—safety, love, a sense of being heard and held. Being treasured. Wanted. Accepted. I can write about these things, but I can’t connect to any of them.

Blank.

It’s the strangest state of being I think I’ve ever experienced. And my meta-awareness of it is just as puzzling. I recognize the blankness, but I’m not mad or sad or angry about it. I am indifferent. I have no emotion about my emotionlessness. Just curiosity. I want to understand it.

Where did it come from?

What does it mean?

How long will it last?

What do I do with it?

My mom asked me the other day why, when we talk every night, she’s always telling me about things that are going on with her (which isn’t much), but I don’t tell her anything that’s going on with me. There’s too much family baggage to unpack there for right now, but at the most basic level, it’s honestly because there’s nothing to tell. Nothing is registering as good, bad, important, exciting. Everything just is.

My emotions still have to be in there somewhere. Right?

Right now, I’ve got nothing.

Just a lukewarm cup of coffee, and Day 12 of my script to start writing.

—

Afternoon update:

An emotion came spilling out of my eyeballs while I tried to nap on the couch earlier. I was thinking about my upcoming 40th birthday. I’d had big plans at one point. My husband and I were actually supposed to go to Italy and Spain this past spring for a joint 15th anniversary/40th birthday trip. But that didn’t happen. Then I thought maybe we could take a road trip through Banff and Vancouver, see all of the wonders of Western Canada. That became “well, what about Napa and Sonoma for a few days?” Then it was “OK, I guess, where can we drive to?” And then at some point, I just stopped thinking about anything altogether.

My best friend has something up her sleeve that I’m not supposed to know about, but I’m also trying not to get excited because, well, expectations haven’t really worked out for me lately. So as I was laying there on the couch, trying to convince myself that it would be fine if no one did anything for my birthday…that I’d just quietly celebrate myself with a long walk and a massage…and that maybe I’d even ask work to take it off the company calendar so no one would know…I started crying.

It was a FEELING.

Turns out I’m not blank. Maybe I’m grieving my broken expectations. Of myself, and of others. Grief can look a lot like denial, which I guess in some ways is like just shutting down.

I’m happy (another FEELING!) that I felt sad. It means there’s something in here, after all.