I'm scared. I'm afraid that I've lost what it means to feel. I'm so scared of this new state of being happy and supported, because I have become numb. It feels as if I've been polished and clipped and shined till my soul rubbed raw, and when a new shield of skin replaced the tarnished character of old, I think I lost some of the beauty of authenticity. I look and feel like a doll on a shelf. I'm shiny and new, but all of my depth and personality feels plastic and fake as well. I liked my sadness. I was in a relationship with pain and when we broke up I felt its absence as a scar, healed leaving an ugly reminder of not just what I used to be, and why I wanted to leave, but also of why I stayed. Without that scar, and with that pain I was real. I was raw, and I was beautiful. And now? With only content to fill its place, and joy and belonging, I feel only the restless aching of imperfection. I feel the flatness of my lost emotions in the curve of my laugh and my inability to search deeply into any conversation. I feel it in the jilt of shock when I realize how judgmental I've become, and the slap of its echo when insecurities arise and threaten to drown me back to whence I came. I feel the pain, vaguely, but different in my frustration. I become frustrated too often now, when I realize my immaturity and my faults and my shortcomings I get frustrated. I've become a maze of my own design and even I can solve it. I've become a puzzle of imperfection and entangled "shoulds", and I hate it. Now that my sadness is gone I see the true ugliness that has replaced it and whether or not it was a mask and a lonely existence part of me longs for the sadness back simply to hide behind. Because with this happiness, all I can think is what now?
