I just need to share some meandering thoughts, please bear with me.
The way I think and feel emotions is strange to me. I’ve spent so much time in my own head conceptualizing things I can’t always process my own thoughts.
I feel like there’s this veil over all my perception that I can just barely catch a sense is there. I especially get it when listening to music with certain ethereal sounds. Sleep is another avenue where I try to press on this boundary, but I’ve never felt like I’ve broken through. I have a vague spiritual sense about it and I feel like realizing my trans identity was the biggest turn towards understanding it. I’m also neurodivergent with ADHD and a good bit of trauma, when I started my stimulant meds it made all these things more manageable, but there’s still this uncomfortable disquiet always on my mind. Anyone else feel this way or something akin to it?
For me its most noticeable with pain (probably because a lot of people don’t even consider it an emotion, but just a purely physical phenomenon). Like, not that long ago I stubbed my toe, yelped because of it, then was convinced I didn’t really stub my toe because there was no pain as far as I could tell. The next morning, it felt stiff, so I think I stubbed it pretty hard.
This morning, I started to wonder if a similar disconnect between my subconscious and conscious experience of pain has actually been the cause an unsettling feeling the last couple days (I was just chalking it up to burnout at work…). I wish my brain wouldn’t keep secrets like that from me when there’s the possibility that I could do something about it >.>
Funnily, one of my earliest memories (assuming it real) was being at my friend’s house and his dad asking us what superpower we’d want and I think I said something like “no pain” (but meant invincibility I think), and he pointed out how that means you could be damaging your body without realizing it.