I’m sitting on my bed. I’m sobbing, but not visibly. I can feel the sobs in my chest, the tightening and heaving. Inside I’m screaming. But he can’t see it when he looks at me. My face can no longer convey the emotions, nor can I truly feel them. They are buried so deep that they are more of an echo, a memory, a diluted idea of what I should be feeling, but some wonderful, horrible place in my brain is protecting me from feeling the full force. My husband, this being far beyond his or any ability to improve the situation, asks me what I need to make this better. “I need a break. I need everything to stop.”

“What kind of break?”

I search my mind and every pained pore on my body, desperate for a clearer understanding of this idea that even I don’t fully grasp.

“I don’t know.”

And I don’t know. I don’t know what “a break” means. It’s not a vacation. It’s not a spa day. It’s this massive, impossible desire to put the whole world on pause.

So I remain seated on the bed until I can’t sit anymore because the world is still moving and there are people who need me to stand up and pretend.

That was just a few months ago, but the scenario has been repeated before and since. The agony of emotional paralysis, the desperation for an unknown something without the slightest idea of what that might be, and the ever-present need for everything to stop. Beyond stop—to be forgotten entirely.

To disappear.