People numb with social media — scrolling and searching and posing and editing. People numb with food — binging and purging and cooking and baking. People numb with booze — blacking out and forgetting.
I numbed with meditation.
I meditated so that I could NOT feel.
I meditated so that I could reach enlightenment, and skip over this whole human experience nonsense we got ourselves into.
I meditated so that I could have something to do that felt productive and important, but really, so that I could escape myself, just for a little bit.
Focusing on my breath was my “quick fix”.
What I realized is this — any tool and any modality can be used against ourselves if we try hard enough.
If we don’t want to look at our shit, we won’t — a mind that wants to be numb will stay numb.
Numbing is addicting — it is satisfying. For a while, it filled a space within me that was empty.
Numbing is the opposite of feeling. It is like skimming the surface of a part of our lives that feel unsafe, unstable, and uncontrollable.
Numbing is not authenticity, or power, or control. Numbing is hopeless and helpless. Numbing is scared.
Most of all, numbing is hard — on our bodies, our minds, and our souls, because numbing is abandonment. It is abandoning a part of ourselves that so desperately wants to be seen. A part of ourselves that is yearning for attention, for care, and for safety.
Numbing is easy and the options are endless — scrolling, eating, drinking, meditating. It doesn’t end. They don’t end.
The thing that’s not easy, though, is waiting too long and realizing that feeling is actually less hard than not feeling, because numbing is abandonment and feeling is trust.
