fifthdream | Aug. 3rd, 2002

It's disconcerting when you can't even tell how you feel, because it's so alien to you. I'm sleepy, and feeling rather exhausted because i've been sitting in this chair too long without doing anything else. Maybe that adds to it, but... I'm feeling sort of disconnected from myself, as if i'm sensing my emotions by remote control, watching them on a view screen. I get a sense of what they are, but i'm not really living them. I do get the idea that if i did feel them, truly, if i allowed them to be pure and really inside of me, that i'd be terribly upset. Maybe i will be in time, but right now i'm just sitting here, feeling these things at arms length, and just going about my business. And anything i do, whatever it may be, anything at all, feels trivial. No, anything i do *is* trivial. I'm in a state of numb disbelief. As things dawn on me, the separation between me and my emotions grows larger. As i realize more, i fall further away. As i remember things, make connections between cause and effect, reveal facts and realize truths, my own self becomes harder to understand. Everything becomes harder to understand. I know the depth of my situation, but it seems i'm realizing it more fully every moment, bit by bit. Every minute that goes by brings me closer to a state of... Again, i don't know what it is; i've never felt it.

What do you do when something you believed in so wholeheartedly, cherished so completely, desired so deeply... the thing you were so familiar with, the thing you felt you knew, the thing you felt was so incredibly beautiful and true... What do you do when it turns out to be completely unknown to you? What do you do when it becomes alien to you? What do you do when it turns out to not be what you believed it to be? What do you do when you can look it in the eye, and not recognize it for what it used to be?

You go numb.

I can't deal with that. I can't deal looking it in the eye and knowing... It's impossible to believe in anything, when you realize the things you knew just aren't the way you knew them. Every moment of every day you know it. You can't do anything. It is beyond your control. You are helpless, and at its mercy. You are shut off, cut off, and left behind. You have no say. You can be in its presence, and just feel the void of what is no longer there. Always. You feel that sucking void, the wall between you and what used to be, the distance as big as what was once in its place.

You go numb.