Comfort In The Uncomfortable

    Feelings and emotions are approximately one in the same, obtaining only one differentiating factor: identifiability. Emotions, unlike feelings, are identifiable. When someone is faced with masses of adrenaline at the sight of their favorite food, that is happiness. But when someone is faced with a feeling so foreign they can’t even begin to approach a distinguishable name, let alone identify it, that is simply just a feeling. Anyone who has been living for more than 5 years becomes familiar with their feelings and emotions; eventually finding comfort in them. When this comfort is lost people then acknowledge their desire to repossess it; this desire is loneliness. 
    One morning, I woke up and found myself once again, dwelling in my bubble of loneliness. Normally I’d grab my phone and listen to a sorrowful cycle of songs to help my tears fall but today was different. I had no desire to feel anything; my mind was entirely numb. I let my clothes drop to the carpet, stepped in the shower, and turned the water to its highest temperature. The water gradually heated itself upon the shaking body before it. My body oozed with emptiness; the kind of emptiness that fills emotional voids. I closed my eyes and imagined the water trickling down my legs as I swayed to the sweet sound of the water falling on the tile. My mind was completely blank and for the first time in my 14 years of living, I was okay with it. I adored it. I soaked up every bit of that seemingly eternal shower I unknowingly yearned for so long.
    After the shower, I sat on my bed for what I thought to be a couple of seconds. The sun was completely out of sight when I snapped out of my existential hypnosis. Those seconds were actually hours and the paresthesia in my legs was a painful reminder. I laid on my back and turned to stare at the dark figure in my closet I was terrified of years ago. It moved. It swayed left and right taunting the paralysis I had put myself through. It laughed at me; it had seen the many times I mentally broke down, the times I laughed myself into the tears. It was amused by my pain. It slowly approached me, almost as though it was expecting me to flinch, to be afraid of it one last time. Its smile grew wider as it reached out to touch my face. But to its surprise, I smiled right back, for I too was amused. It froze, giving me enough time to study its details. It wasn’t smiling, it was sobbing. It was silently drenching my bedroom floor with liquid; its mouth, forever opened, displaying what lies inside: agony. The only thing worse than being in pain is not knowing why the pain is there. I wasn’t staring at a random creature in my bedroom, I was staring at myself. My lonely, pitiful, self. I soon realized where the emptiness I was feeling earlier had come from. I tapped my phone to check the time, I had 6 missed calls from my mother and a text telling me to fill her car with gas. I stared at myself a bit longer, grabbed the keys, and left
    Once in the vehicle, I stroked the leather steering wheel before me, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and started the car. It was an out-of-body experience. No cars on the road, all the lights turned green; it was almost as though that was the exact place I should be at that exact time. I slowly bobbed my head to a song by one of my recently favored artists. I was in a trance, it was witchcraft; I simply had no explanation for what I was feeling. No combination of letters could begin to describe what I underwent. I felt as though my ribcage was going to explode and out of it, my throbbing heart. My body was left unoccupied, in fact, I still don’t know where my mind traveled. I never had so much energy, yet so little energy at the same time. I was utterly intoxicated with nothing more than an emotional deficiency and it made me feel powerful. I was in absolute awe, there was no trace of discomfort in the absence of my emotions. No thought of my previous love interest, nor any guy I took the time to look at. No thought of school, or basketball, or my family. I didn’t even think of myself. Normally I would dread this feeling and attempt at socialization to hypothetically compensate for whatever I was lacking at the time, but there was nothing normal about that experience. I remember staring at the same spot of the windshield, watching the gravel zoom past me in my peripheral as I approached a red light just before the gas station. I sat back, accomplished, for I had found comfort in the absence of emotion. I found comfort in the uncomfortable.