Do you ever get so emotionally worn out that you start shutting down? My wife told me I looked tired last night.
Sometimes I get very tired. Both physically and emotionally. I reach a point where I don’t have anything left to feel. I need to feel sorrow and empathy for those who are hurting. I need to feel angry about injustice. I need to feel hopeful about the future.
But I’m tired and I don’t feel.
It’s like I run out of feeling. I get overwhelmed with all the demands and expectations and go numb. I wish I had a greater capacity for emotion, a deeper well, but I don’t. And, when I get to that point of emptiness, I’m like dried up leaves rolling down the street in the wind. I want to connect, I want to empathize, but when I’m burned out of feelings, nothing rises to the surface. It’s like this bit from a Jackson Browne song:
It’s like a song I can hear
Playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening
And then I feel guilty. People get mad at me sometimes because I’m not always “there” for them like they want me to be. Some have gotten very, very mad. They had no idea what I was going through, and some of them wouldn’t have cared if they did know. They certainly never asked. They were going through their own pain, or loss, and I didn’t respond like they wanted me to, so they condemned me and strapped me to the whipping post. But I don’t hold it against them. I understand.
Sometimes I wish life was a little more like a TV show. A situation comedy. You know, where everything that happens is happening because of all the half heard conversations and assumptions everyone is making about everyone else. Joanie overhears the last sentence of something Chachi is saying to the Fonz and assumes he’s breaking up with her, so she talks to Ritchie, who then goes to the Fonz and yells at him for interfering, which is what Ritchie is doing, not the Fonz. Three’s Company did this for every show they did. Blah blah blah.
In the sitcoms, they always realize in the end how they have gotten it wrong, and they smile and laugh and the camera freeze frames on the big laugh. Credits role.
Life is so NOT a sitcom.
Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011
I concur with every inch of this post, Dave. There are days and sometimes weeks..and we conflict internally over it. The Spirit understands too and is standing in the gap for you...
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean by being emotionally and physically numb ! I think we all go through that every once in a while, at leat those who are emotional do !
ReplyDeleteIt's a great post :) I'm going to share it.
Thanks L and N. And feel free to share anything you find here.
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