Functional Numbness

"Sometimes we love people so much that we have to be numb to it. Because if we actually felt how much we love them, it would kill us. That doesn't make you a bad person. It just means your heart's too big." ~ Riding in Cars with Boys

It’s been very easy lately to crawl back into myself. Hide behind my busy schedule. My friends, my kids, my life.

Once upon a time, I suffered a heartbreak that never seemed to end. Waves of grief colored every aspect of my life and I was faced with a choice. Thud along the bottom of the river, watching the world pass me by from my watery prison, or grab onto that pillar of inner strength and emerge to feel the sunshine again. It wasn’t easy. I stumbled about as often as I made a single sure step.

Time after time, I moved forward. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming (yes, that’s Dory). I got very good at surviving, keeping myself braced. Very little in this life shocks me. There is damn little that I can’t handle. It is what it is. The one thing you can’t do, when you are braced, when you are surviving, is live in the moment.

So it comes down to this. Random moments of happiness. Moments of sunshine that remind you what it is that we are even bothering to live for!

Moments are all we have. It’s all any of us have. And they are enough. I am fortunate enough to have the kind of friends and family who love me in the moment for who I am right then.

I was sitting at dinner the other night, with 11 of my closest friends, people who knew me when. People who remind me who I really am. After more than a couple monkey coconut drinks, with the sunset all around us and laughter that I haven’t felt in years, it was impossible for me not to tear up. And the ones that noticed just smiled at me that smile or laughed a bit. Because we all know what I’m like. And I just do that.

There’s nothing that compares to feeling that kind of intense love. To being accepted and loved and understood. It can take a lifetime to reach that point or it can take an instant. It’s my favorite part, that moment, that pinnacle, when it all just makes sense.

Tomorrow I leave with my family on a 4 day camping trip. I can only hope it is filled with those moments. A time to reconnect. Slow down. Simply be with each other. That moment when we look at each other out of the blue and say “I’ve missed you”. And we both know. Because you can’t feel all the love you feel for someone everyday. You’d never let them leave your sight, or your arms. But sometimes you can, and those are the moments we live for. They make up for the functional numbness. Without the laughter, there would be no tears. But without the laughter, there wouldn’t be any point at all. And I wouldn’t want to live in a world without it.