I felt nothing. It suddenly occurred to me that I felt...nothing.
My eyes scanned the screen feverishly, barely taking in words I'd read 100 times before. I felt no excitement that, in just a few minutes, I would be submitting the final draft of the case study I'd been editing for a week; no nervousness to have my supervisor finally read it over; no pride in what we'd all accomplished this week.
Even the peach I ate had no flavor. I was barely aware of the rhythmic motion as my left hand traveled from plate to mouth, plate to mouth. I looked at the knife I had just used to cut the peach. "I bet if I stabbed this directly into my thigh, even then I wouldn't feel..."
- Hold up. I was not thinking that.
Still, I felt vaguely numb and unimpressed, detached from the work in front of me, Work that, just hours before, I had enthusiastically explained in an email to my parents. But my enthusiasm hadn't just dwindled as I poured over online grammar manuals to make sure my footnotes were formatted properly, my enthusiasm had been dramatically and suddenly snuffed out, replaced by exhaustion.
I can't think of a time in the last 82 days when exhaustion wasn't one of the top three emotions I felt at any given time. Excitement, exhaustion, and gratitude. Or confusion, exhaustion, and mild nausea. Or exhaustion, frustration, and guilt (over feeling exhaustion and frustration). My life and travels and work this summer - in Greece and India and Nepal and China - have been so unpredictable, weird, and amazing, yet my emotional range seems to have shrunk to mimic that of Ron Weasley, aka, the size of a teaspoon.
Multiple times in the last few years I've had the paralyzing fear that travel has somehow messed up my ability to function as a regular, empathetic human. I've become far too competent at saying goodbye; I've developed a suspicion of strangers and situations that allows me to feel safe most of the time; I'm no longer shocked by even the nastiest, most sexist comments I hear; I absorb information about "the number of indigenous Peruvians killed by conquistadors on the ground where you now stand" and "the persistence of the caste system in India that affects people's perceptions of their own abilities" in an academic, almost robotic way, without letting the full weight of those words and moments and locations unsettle me as they should.
How can seeing more of the world make me feel less?
It's as if I were preparing to run a marathon and my feet refused to cooperate. Imagine - lungs, quads, hamstrings, calves, brain, and heart - conditioned to carry me 26.2 miles, but feet that sprout blisters after just two.
The endurance I'd built for marathon travel - to survive on barely any sleep, to lug around a backpack filled with increasingly malodorous clothes, to stay in a new hostel each night with a hodgepodge of international characters, to scrounge in grocery stores for any healthy food, to ride in the back of jeeps and trucks, to never be certain what the day would hold - had stopped just short of my heart. I can only feel so much at one time (whether it be pain, confusion, sorrow, or joy). Sometimes, in marathon-travel moments of overwhelming stimulation, I shut down. My other senses work, but my ability to process those experiences and all that's bombarding my eyes and ears at any given moment ceases to function. "I'll figure it all out later," I think. "Right now, I need to get through this."
Yesterday, after scanning the same 40 pages for hours and hours, I finally finished proofreading the document, attached it to an email, and hit send. My supervisor gave me a wave from her desk and then swung by my desk a minute later to say thanks and to tell me to take a break. She'd add in some of the graphics and charts after they were translated from Chinese and we'd work on formatting the final document in a few days.
I left the office two hours later, having accomplished nothing else that afternoon. I'd mostly sat at my desk and read about "Weekend day trips to escape Beijing" on TripAdvisor, without feeling particularly excited about any of them.
I was walking back towards my hostel, debating whether I should go wander around Houhai for a few hours, or if I should do some grocery shopping, or go sit in bed and study Chinese. I felt disinterested in all my options and wondered if 7 PM was too early to go to bed.
Suddenly, I felt like I was suffocating:
I could feel everything.
My eyes scanned the screen feverishly, barely taking in words I'd read 100 times before. I felt no excitement that, in just a few minutes, I would be submitting the final draft of the case study I'd been editing for a week; no nervousness to have my supervisor finally read it over; no pride in what we'd all accomplished this week.
Even the peach I ate had no flavor. I was barely aware of the rhythmic motion as my left hand traveled from plate to mouth, plate to mouth. I looked at the knife I had just used to cut the peach. "I bet if I stabbed this directly into my thigh, even then I wouldn't feel..."
- Hold up. I was not thinking that.
Still, I felt vaguely numb and unimpressed, detached from the work in front of me, Work that, just hours before, I had enthusiastically explained in an email to my parents. But my enthusiasm hadn't just dwindled as I poured over online grammar manuals to make sure my footnotes were formatted properly, my enthusiasm had been dramatically and suddenly snuffed out, replaced by exhaustion.
I can't think of a time in the last 82 days when exhaustion wasn't one of the top three emotions I felt at any given time. Excitement, exhaustion, and gratitude. Or confusion, exhaustion, and mild nausea. Or exhaustion, frustration, and guilt (over feeling exhaustion and frustration). My life and travels and work this summer - in Greece and India and Nepal and China - have been so unpredictable, weird, and amazing, yet my emotional range seems to have shrunk to mimic that of Ron Weasley, aka, the size of a teaspoon.
Multiple times in the last few years I've had the paralyzing fear that travel has somehow messed up my ability to function as a regular, empathetic human. I've become far too competent at saying goodbye; I've developed a suspicion of strangers and situations that allows me to feel safe most of the time; I'm no longer shocked by even the nastiest, most sexist comments I hear; I absorb information about "the number of indigenous Peruvians killed by conquistadors on the ground where you now stand" and "the persistence of the caste system in India that affects people's perceptions of their own abilities" in an academic, almost robotic way, without letting the full weight of those words and moments and locations unsettle me as they should.
How can seeing more of the world make me feel less?
It's as if I were preparing to run a marathon and my feet refused to cooperate. Imagine - lungs, quads, hamstrings, calves, brain, and heart - conditioned to carry me 26.2 miles, but feet that sprout blisters after just two.
The endurance I'd built for marathon travel - to survive on barely any sleep, to lug around a backpack filled with increasingly malodorous clothes, to stay in a new hostel each night with a hodgepodge of international characters, to scrounge in grocery stores for any healthy food, to ride in the back of jeeps and trucks, to never be certain what the day would hold - had stopped just short of my heart. I can only feel so much at one time (whether it be pain, confusion, sorrow, or joy). Sometimes, in marathon-travel moments of overwhelming stimulation, I shut down. My other senses work, but my ability to process those experiences and all that's bombarding my eyes and ears at any given moment ceases to function. "I'll figure it all out later," I think. "Right now, I need to get through this."
Yesterday, after scanning the same 40 pages for hours and hours, I finally finished proofreading the document, attached it to an email, and hit send. My supervisor gave me a wave from her desk and then swung by my desk a minute later to say thanks and to tell me to take a break. She'd add in some of the graphics and charts after they were translated from Chinese and we'd work on formatting the final document in a few days.
I left the office two hours later, having accomplished nothing else that afternoon. I'd mostly sat at my desk and read about "Weekend day trips to escape Beijing" on TripAdvisor, without feeling particularly excited about any of them.
I was walking back towards my hostel, debating whether I should go wander around Houhai for a few hours, or if I should do some grocery shopping, or go sit in bed and study Chinese. I felt disinterested in all my options and wondered if 7 PM was too early to go to bed.
Suddenly, I felt like I was suffocating:
I could feel everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment