When I Started Numbing

Numbing. What a concept. We all do it. We all seek escape from time to time.

Sometimes we scroll. We binge-watch TV. We lay in bed for too long.

Other times? We go a bit farther. We indulge in things we know won’t bring us goodness. But they bring us relief. And that’s enough.  

My first memory of numbing? I was 11…

I’d sit in our basement playing Dream Life for hours on end. If you know of that game, you know there isn’t much to do aside from changing your avatar's outfits and hair, going to school, and running through the same storylines, choosing different prompts, always getting the same replies. 

I’d zone out and forget about the world around me, the chaos. What a relief it was. Looking back, I wasn’t just playing a game. I was learning how to disappear. It felt better than sitting with the anxiety that flooded my system. It quieted the thoughts I couldn’t seem to turn off.

Fast forward, and I’m 12, reading Twilight for the first time, falling madly, deeply, irrevocably in love with Edward Cullen. I’d dissociate and pretend I was a 17 year old girl named Bella and a sparkly vampire would come and save me from existence. LOL. And, besides, who needed friends when you could fall into a book?

At 16 I was on the backroads of southern Illinois, sipping my first 4 Loko out of a gas station cup filled with ice (they don’t sell 4 Loko anymore, for good reason). We went back to my friend’s house, and I was so wired from the caffeine/alcohol concoction that I stayed up all night watching True Blood because I was too anxious to change my environment, and I couldn’t “undo” the drink I had drunk.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had found my favorite crutch, my sweetest escape, which would lead to a lot of self-implosion.

Over the years, I’ve found new and different ways to numb—some more subtle, some more destructive.

But these moments in time were the beginnings.

It took a while for me to finally sit with my feelings instead of running from them. I can’t wait to tell you about the “in-between.”

Until next time, 

XOXO,

Lucy