I Don’t Romanticize the Numbness the Same Way

Dear Delyara, There was a time when I missed the numbness so much that I almost rewrote it as comfort. That’s what memory does sometimes. It edits pain until it looks softer than it was. It remembers the silence, not the shame. The relief, not the damage. The absence of feeling, not the loss of self. I still miss that false quiet some days. But not blindly. Now when I think about those old escapes, I remember the whole thing. The secrecy. The emotional blur. The way I became harder to respect in my own eyes afterward. That fuller memory has become part of my recovery too.