Losing Feeling

The knife clattered to the floor, sticking the blade in the wood. I look down at it in mild surprise. I was going to grab it so that I can chop this onion, but I must have missed it. “Should have been paying attention when you were going to grab a knife”,I thought to myself. “I could have hurt myself.” I am not the most graceful person, I think one person has even called me clumsy (only after they witnessed me fall straight on to my ass from a patch of ice), but I haven’t lost any fingers or toes yet so I do need to be a bit more careful.

I grab the knife by the handle and pull it from the floor. I don’t think I was off in LaLaland when I was grabbing for the knife, but I guess I must have been. Making some dinner requires a little bit too much focus than would be required to daydream. I put the knife in the sink and go back to my task at hand. I have to hurry a bit more than I would like to get this onion in the oil that I have heating up, so I grab a knife from the rack and begin to cut into it. 

It feels a bit strange though. My knife skills are passable, but tonight it feels a little bit off. I see that the knife is in my hand, but it almost feels like it isn’t there. There is no familiar weight in my hand for a tool that I have used for most of my life. There is no satisfying response when I cut through the onion, I hear the sound of hitting the board, but the rhythm I want from hitting the board doesn’t come. I see the slices before my eyes, they even begin to tear up with the weight of the cliche.

I get the job done, but it is a Rough chop that I would have preferred to be a nice crisp julienne. I shovel them in the oil and grab the handle of the pan so that I can flip it all together. It feels strange too. It feels like I have a mitten on, I know that I am holding it because I can see it, but there is nothing there in my mind. I turn off the stove and set it down, I am having a hard time dealing with this feeling. Am I sick? I don’t know anyone that has just had their hands “turn-off.” How can this be happening to me?

I start to move around my house touching things, things that I know what they are and know how they should be. I feel them and feel their ghost. It is as if my hands will go through thin air as I am going to them, but I know that they will actually touch them. I touch them and there is nothing, it is the opposite of the way that it should be. 

Nothing has happened to me today, I think. Today is like every other day. Life is normal, why could this happen and what does it mean? There were no pins and needles, or any strange feeling, just the absence of anything. 

Why does this have to happen to me? What have I done to deserve this?

The numbness starts to spread beyond my hands, but that isn’t real either. I slap myself on the chest and feel the hit on my chest, the slight sting of a hit and the static that remains on in the skin afterwards. The pain is real and this feeling is real. But I didn’t hit myself with my own hand, I swung an inanimate object at it, something outside of myself.

I begin to question every feeling that I have, when will these all go away too? This thing I have had all my life is gone and when will everything else start to fade? I spiral from my usual place of calm and fall down the abyss of my anxiety.

The feeling knows no end and I have only begun to scratch the surface of what it has to offer me. I need to ask for help with these feelings. I go to the other room and startle my wife with the look on my face. I can feel every muscle in my face stricken and spasming with the anxiety that I feel. Her face downturns, she asks, “Honey, what is the matter?” 

I don’t have any words to describe it, every thought but this anxiety leaves my mind and I am left staring her in the face. She is my rock and we have gone through everything together because we feel so strongly for each other, our hearts meld and beat as one. I reach my hands up to her face, to caress the soft skin that I have known and cherished for so long, and feel nothing. “I can’t feel you,” I finally got out.

Her face scrunches in and her head tilts in that universal signal. I feel unreal right now. My whole life, everyday, I have felt the things around me and have shaped my world with those feelings. 

“I don’t understand, what does that mean?” she asks. “I have nothing to feel with, they are numb.”, I say looking down at my hands. “Can I feel you?” I ask her. “Of course you can honey, I love your touch and the way that it makes me feel.” she answered.

I begin to move my hands over her face and body, moving my hands over inches of skin that I know almost as well as my own. I have spent a happy lifetime feeling this body as if it were my own. We both have had the pleasure of that exploration, the caresses, tickling, poking, and flicking. Her body is the feeling of love, she is love in physical form. There is nothing there though, my mind and touch are at odds. What is reality if it is not what you feel? I can know any of this means anything if I can’t put my hands to it and grip it as if my life depends on it.

“I can’t feel you, there is nothing there.”