At first, it seemed like a brilliant plan to ignore my emotions. When I decided I would let him go because I love him, I knew the only way I would get through the pain was to numb my feelings. I suppressed it. I wouldn’t let myself feel it. I carried on with a smile on my face, pretending like everything was okay. If I felt nothing at all, then I would not hurt. So I worked and I worked and I worked.
I thought I was being strong; resilient, even.
I bottled up the uncomfortable emotions and denied their existence. I buried the difficult feelings deep down; locked away in a hidden corner of my heart. I distracted myself with work, mindless entertainment and anything to keep difficult emotions at bay.
Numbing and distracting myself from feeling wasn’t the only thing I did to not feel. As an introvert, whenever I was going through some kind of pain or an emotionally difficult time, my first instinct was to detach and this is where I excelled. I detached from the world.
But little did I know, the emotions I was rejecting were growing silently in the darkness of my being.