Casual pleasantries are NOT  my thing.  I’d rather hold my breath and pretend I’m invisible than fill the silence with EMPTY words.  I’ve been feeling super uncomfortable lately.  For many months, actually. It’s just my present state of being. My inner and outer selves are exchanging blows. It’s QUITE messy.  

When someone makes socially acceptable, lighthearted banter in my direction, perhaps cheerfully saying, “Hello. How are you?” I usually respond with an “I’M fine, how are YOU?”  That should suffice, but it feels like I’m lying.

I feel uncomfortable, spiritless.  I don’t know why.  I just do.  “Hello, how are you?”  “ME? I am NUMB.  How are you?” 

13th century English is FUN.  ‘Numbness’, is described by the word, ‘TOPOR’ (Latin: torpōr/verb torpēre) – to lack sensation. This word sounds UGLY and DIRTY, and just AWKWARD  enough to express my spiritual and intellectual inertia. Torpid, torpidus, torpitude, torpidity, torpify.  These word forms refer to  the idea of tending or serving to MAKE something or someone NUMB.   

“Hello, how are you?” 

“I am in topor.

I am torpid.

I have been torpified.

I am in the depths of torpidity.

I am overcome with torpidtude.”

Or my favorite, “I TORP”.

I feel like a torpid frog.  I am benumbed and stupefied.  How are YOU?  

We used to have a bearded dragon named Lightning.  He spent weeks in biological dormancy.  He stopped hunting, eating, and  bathing.  IN FACT, he stopped MOVING altogether and appeared NOT to breathe. In reptiles, this is called brumation.  In other animals, it is hibernation. In the wild, it happens to protect certain animals from weather and starvation.  

I feel like I AM  a wild beast who has been forced into domestic living.  I didn’t choose to torp, it’s just a part of how I SURVIVE. Numbness is often a part of mental disorders.  It can be a part of dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization, or in my case, emotional dysregulation.  It’s a COPING mechanism. It’s OKAY to feel  torpid sometimes.  Take some extra time for yourself.  Focus on rest and goodness and trust that ‘HEALING WILL COME ON THE WINGS OF THE SPIRIT AND WE SHALL GO OUT LEAPING LIKE CALVES FROM THE STALL’. (Malachi 4:2)  Too much?  It’s okay.  God holds you in times of joy and in torpidity. 

“Torpify.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torpify. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.