Mike, I think you really captured it here. I realized as I was apologizing for not seeing and feeling what’s been going on without needing to relate to it, that I haven’t been feeling anything. I related (and took down some) tragedies in my life, and I think I may have just subconsciously switched to a state of being safe and not feeling anything at all. I let part of me die with a friend. I watched people who really meant something to me die slowly and buried people over the last few years and realize looking back I wasn’t affected like I normally would have been. I feel sick saying I barely felt anything at all. I felt bad, but not viscerally so as I usually would have.

I’ve been taking a safe path. Walking through a tunnel. I thought not feeling anything was safer than what I was feeling. I meant waking up in my profile in the real sense. It’s slowly happening, and in walking through the airport I’m realizing I can see and feel everybody again. I feel like Neo in The Matrix when he visited it for the first time after waking up.

It maybe started with realizing some in my industry didn’t want me because I was getting older. I felt betrayal. Then, after a chance encounter, I felt desire for the first time in many years. Yesterday, I felt real, true empathy again. I’ve been learning to feel again. I’m starting to feel like who I used to be again.

I truly was in a desert.