How To Start Feeling Again When You’ve Been Numb Too Long

How destroying magazines helped me feel again.

Image created by author with Canva.

I used to collect magazines. Not in a hoarder sort of way, but a substantial collection just the same. I would subscribe to magazines while manic, but after the first or second issue, I was no longer interested. Of course, I wanted to benefit from what I paid for, so I kept every issue. I knew one day I would get back to them.

I don’t remember what set me off, but one day I snapped. Angry, hurt, and frustrated with a head full of noise that never stops, my eye caught a stack of magazines in the corner.

It’s common to feel destructive during a rough bipolar cycle, and those glossy pages got the brunt of my rage.

First one page

First, I tore the cover off of a Men’s Health. The smiling actor on the front showing a body I will never have taunted me. I tore his picture in two. Then I crumpled each piece and threw it. The rush was intense. For the first time in days, I felt something.

Another page went, then another. The crumpled pages soothed my soul, so I tore into the stack with gusto. Page after page, ripped, crumpled, then thrown away from me. Gone went the Men’s Health, The Writer’s Digest, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, and…