Numb
They think that I feel things too much.
They think that I feel things too deeply.
They think that I fall in love too quickly.
They think that I rush into things, don’t think about things, give myself over to things — and they think that this is what makes me hurt too quickly.
They tell me that it would be better for me to feel less.
They tell me that it would be better for me to tell them less.
They tell me that it would be better to cut up my heart into pieces less, and save a little bit more of it for myself (it is my own flesh and blood, after all).
And I know that what they think is not wrong. I know that they only say and remind me of these things because they love me.
It’s just that I have already felt what it it is like to feel nothing at all.
I spent my childhood feeling cold.
My sister and I grew up on the ice, lacing up our skates before the rest of the suburbs around us had even heard their alarms ring for the first time. Each morning, we went to war: a battle between us and the clock.
Battle 1: my father, walking into each of our rooms, switching on the lights and saying, It’s time for practice, time to get ready, time to get up. And me and my sister, each in our own rooms, each ingrained in the practice of replying by rolling over and groaning into our pillows: Okay, okay. I’m getting up.
We hardly ever actually got up after the first round, and thus came Battle 2: I’m serious, you have to get up, my father said in a far more stern voice, to which we both jolted up and replied, I’m up, I’m up!
We only actually woke up when we stepped onto the freshly-resurfaced ice for our 6am practice. We slipped off our skate guards and slid them on top off the plastic boards that encircled the rink as the Zamboni skirted past us and off the gleaming surface that extended in front of us.
The first few minutes on the ice were the ones that hurt the most. My hamstrings screamed as I crossed one leg over another, my calves begged me to stop as I pumped the ice and built up speed, stretching my muscles and bending my back forwards and side to side to try and warm up.
But the fingers were the worst. One pair, two pairs, all the gloves in the world couldn’t seem to help me to keep my own heat in. After two hours of practice — two hours of falling out of jumps, tripping over my feet, sliding on the wet, slippery terrain of the rink — I glided off the ice with hands so red and frigid that they somehow were able to hurt even though they could feel neither the warmth nor the cold.
I rubbed them together to try and wake them back up, to try and bring them back to life, to try and scour off the pain that seemed to be taking root underneath my fingertips. And yet nothing seemed to work.
So instead, I let my fingers hurt.
I stopped trying to fight off the sharpness that bit into my body. I didn’t try to scrub my hands to warm them up any faster than they could. I didn’t try to bring back life into my fingertips. I didn’t try to heat my palms with my hot breath. And with all of my not trying, eventually, the glow came back into my hands all on its own. It spread itself over my fingernails and up my knuckles and grasped onto my wrists like a spiderweb, crawling each finger until finally I could feel myself again.
My two pairs of gloves were still wet, and my body still hurt from the scrapes and bruises of that morning’s practice. But the numbness was gone, and I could finally begin to feel again.
On a crisp morning in November, I walk out the door of my apartment without any gloves and immediately taste bitter regret on the tip of my tongue as I bounce down the steps of our building. My hand reaches for the black metal railing to my right and, as soon as my fingertips touch it, I feel the iciness jolt up my arm until it reaches to the top of my shoulder. I release my fingers, recoiling them back into the sleeves of my jacket and — a moment later — slide my hands down into the pocket of my black pants.
It’s barely seven o’clock in the morning and the sun hasn’t quite peeked its head up just yet. I can feel it yawning, stretching its arms up into the sky, rolling from one side to another, the way that I used to when my father would come into my room to wake up us for practice.
The people who love me always seem to think that I am on the verge of tripping over my toe picks, that I’m about to fall down on my knees, that I will collapse to the ground and hurt myself.
The people who love me always tell me to wear my coat, remind me to wrap myself in a scarf, press gloves into the palms of my hands as I’m leaving the house early in the morning.
The people who love me don’t want me to freeze. And I know it is only because they worry about me getting hurt.
Here is what I wish that I could tell them: I am not afraid of being cold. I am not even scared of my hands going numb. I am not frightened of the moment that all the feeling comes back in a single jolt, all at once.
I know that sometimes it can seem better to not feel anything at all. But I also know this: once the feeling comes back into my fingers, it is only then that I seem to ever really remember: I am alive.
