I used to have nightmares about being operated on while I was awake. Awake enough to be able to see and feel and hear and know exactly what gruesome tasks were being preformed on me, too sedated to be able to move or scream or shout or flinch. I would wake up from these nightmares with my mouth stretched as wide as it would go while my lungs forced the air out of my body and I tried to scream a silent scream.

That is the closest that I can get to describing life on medication.

Far from being a cure, it simply numbs feelings and thoughts and emotions to the point that they can wash over you, slip by completely unnoticed if you allow them. This creates a basis for coping. You cope because everything is numb and quiet and just nothing.

But it’s just like that surreal moment between asleep and awake when you try to scream but nothing comes out.

Yesterday was a bad day. A day where everything seemed to go wrong and no one seemed to listen or understand and where I found myself too exhausted with it all to care anymore.

From the second I woke up it was one thing after another after another and after a particularly grating telephone call I wanted to cry. I really wanted to cry. I wanted to feel my whole body racked with sobs while tears streamed from my eyes and I gasped for air. I needed that, to feel the release. To feel something. But no tears would come. I am numb enough not to be shattered into pieces but too numb to react. It would hurt more if anything could hurt.

After an awful day I tried to be proactive (positive? Normal?) and we walked to the park. Because this is all about Beans isn’t it? Everything is for her and she is everything and maybe if I go on the swings and swing and swing and swing I will feel the wind in my hair and the flip in my stomach and release.

Instead I watched as for the first time ever, as if she had been doing it all of her life, Beans declared ‘steps’, climbed each one by herself, walked across the rickety bridge, holding on tightly to the rope all the way before sitting at the top of the slide, grinning at me, before she pushed off with her arms and slid to the bottom to clap herself for being so clever.

She climbed up the steps and slid down the slide all by herself.

Something that she will do times a million and then some more before she grows up, something that kids do everyday. But she’s my kid and this wasn’t every day this was day one and just wow.

Again, I wanted to cry. Not because it hurt but because my baby did something clever by herself and was so proud and beaming and I was so…something and I wanted that lump in my throat, the salty taste of tears that accompany a sweet moment.

But I can’t even have that.

When bedtime came and went and Beans decided that she wasn’t going to go to bed tonight actually thank you mummy and it took me over three long hours to settle her. When everyone was telling me what I was doing wrong and I needed to do this or that. When in the end I just got her out of bed and told her that I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if she slept or not, I didn’t care what she wanted or who she wanted but I was just not doing this anymore. I wanted to cry then.

I wanted to tell everyone and Beans and all the people that were nowhere near me but who I had spoken to in some way during the day to fuck right off. Just fuck off. This is hard for me you know? I am fucking trying. But how can I try when I can’t even feel? How can I cry when no tears come?

It feels like everything is being taken from me, sucked right out of my soul until I’m a husk of something that used to be a person. I can’t be sad, I can’t be happy. I can’t be. A lump won’t even form in my throat when I want it too.

My heart would break if only I could feel it.