Feeling Like A Stranger in Your Own Skin

Feeling like A Stranger in your Own Skin

Do you ever feel like you don’t know who you are? Like a stranger even to yourself? Like the blood flowing through your veins is alien. Do you ever feel like the pounding of your own heart is unbearable? Does your mind ever feel like the thoughts in your head are so loud you claw at your ears just to have a moment of peace? Do you feel so detached from the world that you can’t even bring yourself to cry?

I was sitting at my computer drinking some ginger ale because my stomach is feeling uneasy. Actually, it may be more accurate to say my whole being feels uneasy. I think I have a sinus infection or a cold or some other lovely ailment. I started writing a blog about weddings. My dad’s wedding, one of my best friend’s weddings, and my own wedding. I started writing and as soon as I did I had this bizarre feeling. It was like my body wanted to cry but I was physically unable to. I’ve never not been able to cry. I actually cry all the time. I cry in movies and TV shows, I cry writing letters, I cry reading books. I cry talking about my feelings, I cry when I can’t make up my mind on decisions, I cry when I’m happy, I cry when I’m mad, I cry because I feel like crying is good for the soul. But today, I can’t. I sat back and tried to access my mood, and I came up blank. I don’t have an adjective to describe how I am feeling right now.

I walked to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face and take a few deep breaths. I looked myself in the mirror and I just had this overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity and indifference.  It was like I was just detached from my own self. I woke up feeling a little off, maybe even a little sad. My morning didn’t get much better when I discovered my poor puppy got sick in the middle of the night and threw up five times all in different areas of carpet. But I’m a nurse so a little bodily fluid never tarnishes my whole day. My mood just got weirder and weirder throughout the day.

I should be happy. I should be dancing around in my beautiful wedding dress that came in the mail yesterday. I should be a lot of things, like I am most days. But today, I’m just not. My anxiety has been flirting with me lately. I’m not sure if that is where my mood today is stemming from or not. I’m not sad. I’m not frustrated. I’m not angry. Those things may be a little easier for me to grasp. I’m not familiar with this strange way I’m feeling, so I’m not sure what to do to snap myself out of it. A couple years ago, I could have popped a few pills or made a pretty little line on my arm and I could be brought back to my reality. My way of dealing with any and everything. Naked truth: sometimes I think life was so much easier then. I sometimes envy the girl I used to be.

Today I’m struggling. I don’t have any reason in the world to feel this way, but apparently, my brain didn’t get that memo. I usually feel too much. It is both a blessing and curse to feel everything so very deeply. My heightened emotions make the dark days seem all consuming but then allow more joy and happiness than I thought was possible for a person to have in one lifetime. And each day usually gets better than the next. But this is different, much different. I don’t know what it’s like to not have deep emotions, even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely. I don’t know what to do with that. So today, I struggle.

xoxo

Jojo