I guess this is better than the crippling, isolating and terrifying pain that it can also inflict. However, the numbness is just so empty. It leaves me feeling extremely flat.
Today was a brutal day of numbness. Every decision, moment and experience just fell flat for me. The numbness leads to my indecision of what lead to call first, what to eat or whether to eat, what route to take to an appointment, what to do with my free time after work, and on and on it goes.
The numbness also leaves me feeling less awake. It is as if the world is streaming by and my mind can't keep up. I'm moving in slow motion and the world is moving at super speed. Colors look pale, food tastes dull, conversations require such effort, every experience is mind numbingly sparse of emotion.
Things I would normally find exciting wash over me with such ambivalence. The siting of a wild bob cat barely registered with me. I watched him slink off into the woods with barely any reaction. My nightly walk in the city forest felt forced and unemotional. Even the siting of a wild rabbit on the bog walk couldn't illicit a reaction from my numb self.
I can honestly say today I feel the numbness to be the worst side effect of depression. It turns me off on such an emotional human level that cripples differently than the pain. It isolates me simply by my non reactions. The numbness shows others that I'm disinterested and different. It shows my illness. The work to fight the numbness is more exhausting than fighting the crippling pain.
I understand only too well what you mean. Sometimes the numbness paralyzes me and the worst part of it is that I can't even explain to my husband why I feel crappy, it's just...nothing. This is always the thing that makes me feel lazy instead of depressed. I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one who feels this way and that it really is part of the depression.
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely not laziness, it is the depression. It saps the will and decision making ability. Depression even takes my voice away, tripping me in to awkward silence.
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