They tell you you’re numb. That’s not the word. Numb is what your mouth feels like after the dentist. Numb is not feeling any pain, not feeling anything really.

This is not that.

The empty void inside is not pain-free. It is a deep, heavy, aching black hole that consumes everything in you. It has weight. It has gravity. It pulls at you from the inside and there is nowhere to go to get away from it, because it is you now, or it has eaten enough of you that it feels like it. The difference between you and it is getting harder to find.

That is not numbness. That is something else, and nobody tells you the real word for it because nobody who hasn’t been there has one.

I can still feel the empty void that had become my insides. The hopelessness that was right there, in my face, screaming at me to let go of the final thread of hope to which I clung. Yes, I had made stupid decisions in my past, who hasn’t. I had taken steps to throw me into a hole of despair, but I had not willingly gone head first into this sea of desolation and nothingness. It seemed that instead of being Midas with his golden touch, I had developed a touch that turned everything to shambles and shame. I could do nothing right, even things that I had done over and over, and well, turned into humiliation and fell apart. My mind was doing its best to completely shut out the world and turn off. There I lay, internally screaming at myself to get up, to keep going, that I wasn’t this weak piece of garbage and that I wasn’t allowed to quit. But my body wouldn’t move. I couldn’t make myself move.

How did I get here? Where did I slip and fall down 50 flights to the basement under the parking garage of rock bottom in life? I honestly cannot tell you. I only know that one day I was happy and today I cannot remember what happy feels like. I know that I took actions that caused a lot of this pain and agony, but I also know that some of this is so far beyond anything that makes sense.

Yet, here I sit. My reality is me, laying here, screaming at myself to get up, to keep moving, to stop being so weak. If I could only clean up the physical mess around me then maybe, just maybe I can organize the mental and emotional mess in my head. Hours pass, and I haven’t moved. All I can do is focus on keeping the self pity at bay. If I let it break the perimeter, it’s over.