Numb

I wrote this poem when I was in an extremely poor mental state. At the time, I didn't understand why I'd become immune to the things, activities, and people that used to bring me joy or pain. Although I still sometimes return to this state, I've learned that just like the bad times teach us to appreciate the good, the seasons where we can't feel deeply or experience fully allow us to embrace and cherish emotions and true living when it does come along.

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There’s breath in my lungs, but I don’t seem to breathe.

My heartbeat remains loyal, but that’s no use to me.

I’m breathing, heart-beating, I’ve reason to live,

But still, I am hollow as exhaust just won’t give.

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I find purpose in meaning in all that I see,

Yet my mind blocks this beauty, God, just let me be.

All I want is to live, experience happiness and pain,

but the sunshine is cold and I’m dry despite rain.

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I feel nothing, completely immune to it all.

Once I prayed to fly, now I’d happily greet fall,

Anything to remind me I’m here and alive.

Anything to convince me the world’s not a lie.

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Even now, as you strangers read words laid before you,

I hyperbolize these feelings to get my message’s core through.

I have anger inside me, but it hardly overflows.

I have happiness to guide me, but that comes quick then soon goes.

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I hardly ever cry and when I do it’s a few drops,

And if I’m ever moved to sobbing, I feel nothing when it stops.

If you ever catch me smile, I’m blank when you look away,

And though I seem it when you open up, I never share your pain.

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God! Give me ecstasy or misery, I couldn’t care less which one,

Even if I become Icarus flying toward the sun.

Let me live, let me feel, I don’t want to become

One more out of seven billion breezing through life numb.

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Yes, I feel empty when I should feel full,

But I suppose that’s just the price one pays to be a fool

on this earth with all the other fools trying to forget

and remember simultaneously, living only a fragment of it.

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Life can’t be lived to the fullest, but it can be full.

Full of joy and full of sadness, full of empty, full of whole.