There were many
times as a child and young adult I just felt nothing.
This is a skill; a skill I cultivated long ago. I learned to remove myself from the here and
now and go to a grey, dull place. A
place where there literally is nothing.
Many people learn to do this as a way to cope, as I did. I don’t want to go into the reasons why I
learned to do this, suffice it to say I was not the first and I won’t be the
last.
Unfortunately after a while it becomes an automatic response.
So when I was
preparing to place my son for adoption I knew that it would haunt me all the
rest of my days if I did not stare it in the eyes and work through the
pain. So, I made a conscious effort, and
an actual plan, to process and grieve his loss and not to go to that place of nothing.
I think this is how I’ve made it to today with less “fucked-up-ness”
than I would have had otherwise.
Here, today, in the
now, I am continuing to make a conscious effort to find ways to replace that
auto response with something better, something healthy. I am clear that I want to feel and
experience everything I can. I want to
see the people around me and share their world, and I want to share mine. I want to experience the good and the bad and
feel it now. I don’t want or need to
block out the negative because I now have to tools I need to get through to the
other side.
Of course that doesn’t mean I always
use them, but nobody's perfect, right?
