Since I started this, I might as well let it be read.

This is an entry I wrote a few weeks ago, but never published. It seemed unfinished at the time. Now it just seems fitting...

"I couldn't tell you why this happens. It doesn't really make sense to me either. It's just something that has become common in my life when things start to fall apart. It's a frightening feeling, being numb. Completely and totally numb. It's scary not knowing how you feel, but knowing that, considering the circumstances, you should be feeling something. But there's nothing there. It's almost as if you've been completely poured out and all that remains is an empty, hollow shell of a person. All you can do is hope that it's only temporary.

I don't know why this happens. It hasn't always been this way. I haven't always been this way. Maybe this is just my new way of coping. There are no tears, or sobs, or the staggered breathing that has become a sure-fire sign that there was something very not right with me. None of that is there now. I know what's happening and I know how I should feel, what a normal reaction to something like this would look like, but there is something prohibiting me from reacting accordingly.

It may not be possible for me to make sense of why this is the state I find myself in, but what I know for sure is what it's like. You're still able to function and go through the motions of your daily routines. You can go on as if everything is normal, and it almost feels as though it is. But there's something missing, something that doesn't really sit right in the pit of your stomach. You walk around as you would normally, you laugh at people's jokes and smile when they do. You exist, but very little more than that. You just are. A large part of you seems to be dormant. Not gone entirely, just...unreachable.

There are two possible explanations that make even an ounce of sense to me. The first: I physically cannot handle the pain that actually enduring the emotions that are bound to come with something like this would cause. My body simply cannot withstand that kind of agony and my brain is responding by playing defense. The second explanation is that the things that I am supposed to be feeling are so deeply rooted that they are unable to rise to the surface and penetrate the nerve endings in my brain that would send me into a very painful emotional tailspin.

Neither of these potential explanations are pleasant. Obviously. But, hopeless and numb as I am, there is still one hope that I am clinging to. I am holding fast to the absolute ability of God. This is not over, even though I have already made up my mind that it is."