peeking out of my cave for a moment.

i've been formulating this entry in my head for quite some time, but every time i get close to actually committing it to binary, i find i lose my taste for it. at the end of this quiet fall weekend, however, i wonder if i'll actually be able to go through with it.

lately, i realize, i've been extremely busy--between the band, my class and other commitments, i barely have time to breathe, much less focus on anything. i took a day off of work exclusively so i could watch tv; that's how busy i've been. the problem is, having had a relatively low-key weekend (kept intentionally so), i've found the time to think about why i've been keeping myself so busy. which means i've had to stare down something that has been bothering me for a while, that i've been trying to will away with joviality and toil.

simply put, i feel like i've been living my life in sepia; in the heat of an argument one night, i actually used the term "i feel like i'm dead inside." though it was said in the heat of the moment, it's not entirely inaccurate. i feel, sometimes, like my emotional center has melted down. which is not to say that i don't FEEL. i feel plenty. i feel happiness, and sadness, and love, and sorrow; but they are muted. i remember having a propensity for Joy (with capital letters), and i remember falling into sadnesses so deep that they were almost satisfying. i remember disappointments so acute i felt as though i were drowning. i remember feeling things so strongly that they permeated my whole body; i remember it enough to wonder why i don't anymore, for the most part.

the notable exception is anger; mercy, do i still feel anger. i feel anger so strongly that i sometimes think it's going to tear me apart. it rips through me like a current, suffusing me with a strange kind of warmth, a terrifying conviction. i feel it so strongly that i have started to welcome it, because it reminds me what it's like to feel something other than empty.

i don't talk much anymore, at least not nearly as much as i used to. i find it harder and harder to articulate what is going on in my head, to anyone. as though every word is a trap. every thought is dangerous.

i think the two phenomena are related; what i think is that i've spent so much energy smashing down my feelings, because i feel they're wrong or i'm not entitled to them or they'll do nothing but get me into trouble, that i don't even feel them anymore before they get tamped down into oblivion. bypass, reroute, please take this detour.

subconsciously, i think i'm worried that if i start to talk about them, i will open floodgates that will never close again. and then i'll have to deal with the fact that, when you come right down to it, i am not okay. and i will have to feel it. i dress it up and i laugh it off and i flat out ignore it and pretend i am fine, and i am not. i am really not fine. i am heartbroken, and it's not healing. and i don't know WHY. i would give anything to know WHY, to know WHAT HAPPENED to make me hit the dimmer switch on my emotions.

i want to know why i am keeping secrets from myself. i want to know why i don't react anymore. i want to know why i feel so dead inside, where my enthusiasm and ability to feel pain or pleasure in reaction to outside stimulus went. i want to feel joy so wild it makes my head spin, and i want to feel hurt and sorrow and everything in between. but that would mean i'd have to feel. and that, my friends, is the gloriously ironic problem.

i want to let it out when the cracks start to show. but i never do.

that's all.