Numbness

A year ago, I lost my father. It happened very quickly, one minute he was there and the next he was gone. There are aspects of my loss I am not ready to share with anyone yet, even via the ether of the net. However I feel that sometimes writing can be a great healer - so I will talk about how I feel these days.

The months following my dads death when I could think of nothing else except him, feel nothing except pain, and replayed that day he died a million times wishing I could change it - those months have thankfully blurred in my memory, the pain perhaps too acute to be remembered accurately.

These days however, I sometimes wonder whether it is ever possible for the world to look the same again. Or more importantly, for me to ever feel the same again. I function now as if nothing had ever happened. I doubt anyone who didn't know would ever know. On the inside however, everything is very different. I have what I think can only be described as a black hole. It sucks away the happiness and leaves emptiness. For the majority of the time there is no pain, just a void of feeling through which an occasional stab of pain breaks the monotomy and reminds me that I am capable of emotion.

One thing people have begun to pick up on recently is my lack of excitment about thing they perceive I should be looking forward too. In fact this is one of the things my in-laws have used as a stick to beat me with. I think that emotion is one that I am simply currently incapable of.

Maybe the numbness I am experiencing is simpy another shut-off mechanism, like my blurring memory. Perhaps it is a more sinister sign that I have begun to associate feeling really happy with disaster. The last time I ever saw my dad, when I left him I drove back to my new flat and took the back route along the country lanes to enjoy the spring lane. I remember feeling like I had everything in the world I could ever want. After he died I felt like by being that happy and having everything I wanted in the world it was somehow my fault. 10 months later I felt a moments happiness, the first since he had died, sledding down slopes on a map at midnight. A week later my precious kitten, named after my dad, was having open heart surgery. I felt that same feeling, like it was my fault because I had been happy for a moment.

I no longer know which is the overwhelming force behind my total numbness. I know that at the moment the huge part of my life that is missing means I cannot feel really happy as there is a constant sadness within me. But there is also a fear that feeling happy would bring more pain.