Recognizing The Numbness
The beginning of falling back in love with myself
Usually this time of week I release a paid post, but today it is going out to everyone as the opener to the series I am starting that was teased in my Craving More Than Physical Post.
For a long time, I didn’t realise how far away from myself I had drifted. When you’re living with chronic illness, surviving abusive relationships, or just navigating life at its hardest, you don’t have time to notice the slow unravelling of your connection to your own body. You’re too busy trying to stay alive, to keep moving forward, to make it through another day. You don’t pause to wonder what’s missing, because the focus is on what’s required.
For me, it all began with a near-death experience. What should have been an ending became the beginning of my chronic illness journey and it changed the way I saw life. Those moments on the edge sharpened everything. Suddenly the smallest details became treasures: the warmth of sunlight on my skin, the sound of my parents laughing, the comfort of a hand resting in mine. I understood in a way I never had before that life was made of these tiny, ordinary fragments.
As time went on, and illness became an ongoing reality, something else happened. It was as if someone reached inside me and used a dimmer switch. The lights of those precious moments grew duller. I was still alive, but not fully living. My senses blurred food tasted flat (a combination of medication and living on a restricted diet), music that once made me move barely reached me, joy felt muted. Even emotions became confusing, layered under exhaustion. Was I sad, happy, or just too tired to know? In the process of saving my life, I had lost so many parts of it that once made it worth living.
That’s the reality of losing yourself to the numbness. It’s not just about intimacy or sex, though that too faded. It’s about losing touch with the senses and experiences that tether us to being human dancing, laughing, tasting, feeling and realising one day that you’re no longer rooted in your own body, but hovering just above it, surviving rather than inhabiting.
In my paid membership series, I’ll be diving deeper into this journey navigating the parts of recovery that are rarely spoken about. Beyond living with heart failure, endometriosis, and Graves’ disease, to the healing process of relearning my body in terms of strength, sex drive, and the fragile beauty of love while carrying all of this. It will also be about the importance of self-love along the way, because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that falling back in love with yourself isn’t optional it’s essential.
This is the start: recognising the numbness. Naming it. And gently, patiently, beginning to feel again.
This is a topic that isn’t for everyone, so my usual chaotic, chronically Bex posts will still be coming through, this is just a part of me that I am feeling very drawn to sharing and diving into at the moment and if you feel like that is something you would like to join me on I would love to have you with me.
XXX
Chronically Bex
