Currently Listening Cities By Anberlin Alexithymia see related

Don't try to wake me up
Even if the sun really does come out tomorrow
Don't believe anything you say
Anymore, in the morn, in the morning
Bricks to this old house are breaking
Steel would have weathered but now forlorning
It's alarming how loud the silence screams
No warn, no warn, no warning
Addictions fill the table where the family used to sit
And conversate, conversate to the sounds
To the sounds of a record player
With it's jumping needle and the lights
That grow dim over time

With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive

Are you where you thought you'd be
So beautiful and only twenty-three
Opposition rests in the hearts
With no, with no, with no opportunity
It's not that we don't talk
It's just no one really listens and honesty fades
Like a politician lost in the course
All smiles and no one remembers our names

With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive

Don't try to wake me up
Even if the sun really does come out tomorrow
Don't believe anything I say
Anymore, in the morn, in the morning

With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive
With downcast eyes
There's more to living than being alive

~ “Alexithymia”, Anberlin

I kind of like words.  A lot.  Anyone who knows me well knows this.  So it should be no surprise to you I’m going to write something about a word that most people probably have never heard of.  Alexithymia comes from the Greek meaning literally, “without words for emotions”.  It’s usually used in a medical sense to describe psychiatric disorders or medical problems that would cause the inability to express emotions verbally.  But we’ll ignore that context for now.  ::wink::

I bring up this word because recently, or to be specific, in the last week and a half, I feel that I have lost the ability to effective communicate my emotions.  Sometimes I don’t even know what emotion I’m feeling, to be quite honest.  It’s been such a whirlwind the past ten days.  It would be enough to leave any sane person confused, frustrated and perhaps drive them insane.  Lucky for me, I was never sane to begin with.  But I will admit, it is still frustrating.  I’ve always found I kind of flash through my emotions… one second I’ll be livid and the next I’ll be content, and so forth.  I could never explain or understand it, so I stopped trying to a long time ago.  I just accepted it as how I dealt with my emotions.  But nothing, nothing, has ever happened quite in the way it has the last several days.  It doesn’t feel like it’s been only ten days, it feels like years… easily the longest ten days of my life.  And definitely some of the most exhausting.

Suffice it to say, I’ve been through a hurricane of emotions.  I’ve felt every possible combination of joy, elation, peace, contentedness, hope, love, hurt, pain, regret, anger, rage, dismay, depression, hate… the list goes on and on.  Sometimes all at once, sometimes separately, but more often the previous than the latter.  I don’t think there’s an emotion I haven’t felt.  Save one.  The one I wanted more than anything to never, ever feel again.  The one I wouldn’t wish upon even the worst of my enemies.  And yet I wake up this morning only to be completely overwhelmed by it.  That, perhaps more than anything else, is the most frustrating.  To me, it’s the ultimate feeling of despair and pain.  It’s almost suffocating.  What emotion would this be?  Betrayal.  Complete betrayal.  And actually, this time, I think I can actually say it was a complete betrayal, at least it certainly feels like that.  There are two (possibly three) instances I can think of in the past two years where I have felt utterly betrayed, but nothing on this level.

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but all the same, Elinor, one would never be without that experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived. . . .”  I think that’s Agatha Christie at her best.  I love quotes about how it is better love and lose than never love at all.  I think it’s so very true.  But this one is different.  She brings it full-circle… there is so much pain in it.  So much sorrow.  In the end, I think, it’s absolutely worth it, though.  That is, until you feel betrayed.  I honestly have to wonder if it’s worth it only to feel betrayed.  Under any other circumstance, I would completely agree with this quote… but under my current circumstances, I truly would rather not love at all if my other choice is to feel betrayed afterwards.

I’ve learnt a lot about emotions through this… emotions are fleeting.  I always knew any relationship (including friendships) couldn’t be based in emotion.  Now I truly see and understand why.  I suppose that’s a good thing.  I just hate having to have learnt it this way.  But if learning a lesson was easy… we probably wouldn’t learn much.  Or remember it.  Right?

Well, I guess now that I’ve finally hit the bottom, metaphorically speaking, I can only go up.  I couldn’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now… hence the word “alexithymia” coming to mind.  And yet somehow, through it all, I still feel hope and even a little bit of peace.  And, unlike the open-endedness and uncertainty I’ve felt since Sunday, I guess I feel some sense of closure.  So life goes on, completely changed from before, but it goes on.  And at this point, that’s all I can ask and hope for.  I would truly appreciate your prayers.

-- Sarah

P.S. Josh Groban has some of the best songs in the world on this subject.  It's scary how much I can relate to songs like "Mai", "L'Ultima Notte", "Un Amore Per Sempre" and so on right now...