Detached
I sit up against the headboard of my bed wearing my warmest sweater and covered in my heaviest blankets, yet I'm still unable to feel anything. Not my body or even the clothes I'm wearing, nor can I feel the blankets I'm covered with. I barely feel like I'm living in my own body, even the very thoughts I'm thinking don't feel like my own.
"I'm really me right now, right?" I think this to myself as I pinch myself to confirm this isn't dream though I couldn't feel that either. There is only one thing in my body that I can feel, and it's the gaping hole in my heart. It feels... empty, and hollow. It feels like a dark abyss that when I look into it, it looks back at me. Though I barely feel any emotions, I do feel something when staring into that abyss and only one word comes to mind for it, horrifying. There's a voice somewhere in my head that tells me I shouldn't look any deeper into the abyss, but it also tells me it's the reason I can't feel anything.
It would probably be best to just leave it be, but at the same time I'm so sick of feeling so numb. I want to be able to laugh again and truly enjoy life, and I'm not about to let anything stop me from achieving that. With the slight hint of motivation I had, I looked deeper into the hole in my heart, I thought more and more about it. The more I did though, the more I started to see images of things that happened to me in the past.
The first memory I saw was about the first days of 6th grade. I was late that day because my parents and I had visited my grandmother who had been taken to the hospital that same day. When I had finally arrived to school, the teacher humiliated me in front of the whole class and of course all the students followed the teacher's lead. The days after that didn't get much better than that though, everyone constantly picked on me for anything. The worst thing I could say that happened was when one the popular girls caught me drawing once. I always enjoyed drawing strange and unusual creatures, but the girl told me that they were just reflections of how ugly I was.
After recalling that memory, I immediately snapped back to reality. I was panting heavily, as if I had just worn up from a nightmare. I start to feel an uncomfortable swelling in my heart, it's slightly painful and very noticeable but as I start to reflect on this feeling, it's only a fraction of what I felt that day. Despite this I wanted to dig deeper, I wanted to find the reason why I couldn't feel anymore, so I did, but this memory is worse than the last.
This memory was from high school, the bullying never really stopped and I was almost always the butt end of any joke. Even though I was better at ignoring it, it still bothered me. I was dating someone though, he was my age and I loved him very much, it felt like he understood me. He was never bothered by my awkwardness and he liked my drawings, what more could I ask for? That is until the day we had exams. On that day, I found out that he had been cheating on me the whole time because of a picture that he had posted on his social media, a picture that he intended for me to see. When I saw it I rushed to school only to hear everyone laughing at me while he was making out with his real girl. I asked him how could he, but he then told me that it was just a part of a bet he made with his stupid friends and that he wouldn't really date someone as hideous as me.
Those words would continue to repeat in my head, and I failed my exams because of that. When the test scores finally arrived, my parents were enraged. They scolded me, telling me how on earth will I be able to go to college with grade like these. I tried telling them what happened, but they didn't want to hear my "excuses", then my mom told me that I'm just a useless burden.
I couldn't take it anymore after that, I came back to reality, breathing heavily again. The more I recalled the memory the more I felt my heart being ripped apart. Before the feeling got out of hand, the pain just disappeared. It just....stopped, and I felt numb again. Tears were streaming down my face, but I couldn't tell why. I can recall that memory, but it feels like it wasn't me who was in it.
I'm... I'm back where I started, but it's worse than before. I feel numb again, but now I feel this heaviness now as well. I... I can't take it anymore, I feel awful, I feel burdened, empty, heavy, all sorts of things. I just want it all to disappear. But I'm too afraid of death to kill myself. Should I try praying? Would that even work? I finally got up from my bed and looked around my room. After a bit of searching, I finally found the old Bible that I got from the church I used to go to. Everyone always told me that God wasn't real and that it was all just a fairytale, but what other choice do I have? I've already given up on humanity. I open the book and begin to read for a while, I'm feeling a bit lighter than before. Even if people don't think He is real, I at the very least have something or someone to lean on.