Numb at 10,000 Feet: Life without Emotion

I received a text from a friend yesterday “Are you okay?” The concern was in response to a post about driving madly through the night, sobbing unapologetically, moving through emotions with a big heaping dose of I-don’t-give-a-fuck (although the truth is, I always give a fuck – that’s what makes life so real).

Feelings are uncomfortable.

I grew up with major depression, and later developed anxiety and mania in my twenties. Although the intensity of this spectrum might be difficult for some people to relate to (or maybe it’s not), the reason I write about the ugly stuff is because we all go through it, to some extent.

Your version of a breakdown might be slumping around your living room with a glass of wine and a sappy playlist, thinking about all the ways your life isn’t measuring up. Or, spilling something on your shoe and crying about it. Maybe you lose your shit in the grocery store line, in the bathroom at work, or with your kids. However you process emotions, they’re there.

I’m you, amplified. You’re me, from a different angle. We’re all some version of each other.

Feelings can be deeply uncomfortable. They can also be beautiful, passionate, cathartic, liberating and immensely powerful. I cherish the spontaneous sobs, uncontrollably laughter, bursts of rage and moments of sadness, because I haven’t always had the ability to access them fully.

There are pockets of my life – large gaps, or, who am I kidding, vast canyons – where I turned these uncomfortable moments off entirely.

When I was in college I jumped 10,000 feet out of an airplane. I want to tell you that the experience was exhilarating, epic, soul expanding. I want to tell you that the rush was incredible, that my life purpose flashed before my eyes and that I walked away a braver human.

What really happened was, I felt nothing.

I jumped out of an airplane from 10,000 feet, and didn’t feel a fucking thing. Not fear, not excitement, not joy or gratitude or awe. All that was there was numbness, indifference, apathy. I was so in my head and not in my own body that I bypassed emotional receptivity that day, and floated through the sky with careless detachment.

That, my friends, is why present day, I don’t take a single emotion for granted.

Emotions are precious. Worry, hope, hatred, compassion, desperation, rapture. Inspiration, vulnerability, emptiness, misery, release, ecstasy. Grief, bliss, frustration, amazement, love, discomfort, fury. Creativity, openness, doubt, resentment, thrill, curiosity, uncertainty.

These are all cherished gifts that, once absent, now hit me like a freight train whenever they goddamn please. I welcome them with celebration, because I know what life is like when they’re not around – flat, colorless, barren.

So, to answer your question, my friends, I’m wildly, magically, wholeheartedly okay. I feel in a big way. Too big, sometimes. Most times. All the time. But the point is, I feel. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Choose to feel.