Numb

I hate feeling numb.

(Hang on, I need to clean my glasses. Argh, it's still fuzzy, dream like. I can't make out the shapes).

Someone could be crying in front of me and I'd feel absolutely nothing. It's not an emptiness or void that needs to be filled. It is a non-reaction. A lack of motivation, a lack of empathy for how anyone is feeling. Even myself. It's blank, but it's not cold. I'm present, but not fully awake. It doesn't help that my dreams are portraying every one of my insecurities right now. I keep having a recurring dream where my brother places me in bear hug at work. His grip gets tighter and tighter despite me fighting, pleading and screaming for him to get off me. No matter how hard I fight, how much I shout, I can't struggle anymore. I can't shout anymore. The energy just leaves my body. It's gets dark and I hear can hear voices asking what happened to me, but I don't wake up. It's just black. The voices slowly start to fade until I see nothing. I hear nothing. I am nothing. I am incredibly anxious about him working in my space. Threatening my reputation. Work is my place to escape my mental health burdens. Mr. Melancholia and Ms. Stress are kept at bay when I'm at work. They now threaten to make regular appearances at my place of work, mixing business and family.

I've been caught in some rough situations before. For example, working with my ex-girlfriend while she dates a mutual colleague of ours, in the same store. But working with my brother, I can only anticipate that this will be worse. Or it could be ok? I moved out of home to get away from him, and here he is in the same work place as me. It's incredibly selfish of him to accept a job where I am. Knowing full well we aren't on the same page with a lot of things. Yet, I don't behave selfishly and colour leaderships opinion of him, so he doesn't get the job. To go even further, when I tell people he's working here, they immediately have the same reaction I do. Which makes my feelings worse. What's even more confusing, everyone really believes it's going to be alright. Asking me to pray and meditate. What is that really going to do?

I'm dreaming about people I've met only once. In one dream I allowed a manager to beat me up in store, and convinced said manager and seniors that it was my fault. When in fact, I was covering for him because he made a mistake, he gave a customer back £2000 too much. I battle with another manager about her selfish one track approach to managing a department. Again, she makes a major error by deleting staff records and re-transacting a fraudulent payment. Again, I fix it. My reward, being issued a final written warning. The dreams are so vivid I feel like they could be premonitions.

All of my body image securities are coming out full force. A guy I've never met before just keeps stripping naked in front of me in my dreams. It makes me uncomfortable, not to mention this act of nakedness happens randomly. People keep exposing their feet to me in my dreams. With all this, people keeping coupling up, with new partners. The conversations surrounding potential partners is cavalier and easy and I feel confused, finding it difficult to connect and have and maintain meaningful relationships.

Every night without fail, some dream like the ones mentioned stalks me like the shadows on my wall at night. I'm so exhausted.

At least I'm sleeping.