“Uncomfortably Numb”

c. 2017 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(12-17)

Heartbreak.

Recently, I read a column by my friend Cheryl Kelly on this vexing woe. As with her past material, the piece was written in an honest and expressive style. I have always admired her ‘realism’ in print. But afterward, I pondered an unintended consequence of having looked at the manuscript – a personal realization of sorts. Instead of feeling this emotional agony gnawing at the core of myself, I was blank on the subject.

Strangely and undeniably numb.

It was easy to observe that this condition must have been precipitated by more years having passed for myself. Or perhaps, it resulted because of the two failed marriages that had filled much of my life. Yet while searching for some evidence of cause and effect, I slipped backward into my original realization. Regardless of the reasons involved, I felt nothing.

My heart had gone dead.

I reckoned that confessing such a reality might seem depressing to readers. So it is something I have never addressed on the printed page. Some could see this as a coping mechanism, or a defensive posture. Maybe even a strategy to gain protective isolation. But for this writer, the knowledge of my numbness arrived with a curious sense of detachment.

I did not choose the path. But here I walk.

Romantic inclinations had long since disappeared from my personal routine. Instead, I felt a certain fondness for old memories, without the ability to yearn for what had gone before. I could remember, but not revisit those days in the flesh.

Ecstasy and betrayal share a similar connection to the heart. Direct and hot-wired. Their ability to move us forward or back is a function of vulnerability offered up as a sacrifice to gods of passion and love. A heart not opened can never feel the full measure of joy. Yet if the coin flips, on the other side is hurt and despair. A kind of desolation that robs the sky of daylight and leaves the soul to wither away in darkness.

Somehow, my own spirit had channeled that darkness into energy.

Many years ago, in New York, I once returned home off-schedule, to surprise my girlfriend with a bit of extra time we could share. I had planned on a summer excursion with music, flowers and wine. But upon arriving at our house, I found her in bed with a man I did not recognize. The experience was shocking to inherit as a young man. Still, from a perspective of years, I remember it more as a reconnaissance mission. A bit of education that left me sadder but wiser. My head and heart filled with something that I needed to know about the truth of our relationship. Decades later, I stumbled upon similar emotions in my second marriage. This time, the burning in my heart had a wholly different character. Instead of shock, I felt the numbness take hold. My head bowed and nodded with familiarity as silent words came to mind. “Yes, I should have known… I should have known.”

The difference between struggling for skills to manage heartbreak itself, and the quiet sense of acceptance that I felt personally, seemed to be a divide most likely caused by age. My own emotional core had simply taken more lightning strikes over the course of time. More bruises, more scars. More nights waking up from frightful dreams with tears streaming from my eyes. More fits of anguish. More lonely hours suffocating in the harsh reality of nothing.

Still, everyone does not react in the same way to similar events. I knew this truism to be accurate.

So once again, I returned to my sobering vision of self. A mirror image revealed by reading my friend’s written work. For whatever reason, I felt negated once again. Like an empty jar. A being transformed by experience. Purified in the heat of agony. Never again a citizen among those still dwelling in sunlight. But no worse for wear. Changed but no less alive.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, I had become ‘uncomfortably numb.’

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