i can't feel my fingers

i can't feel my fingers. meant in both the literal sense and the metaphorical sense of i keep dropping things i care about and have to watch them shatter at my own feet like an overly expensive glass ornament that was purchased for the whimsy and joy of it only to cause devastation and become a thousand splintering shards on the floor. now i have to clean it up. but how can i clean it up when i have no feeling in my fingers? swiping my hands through the mess as if to clean it but only succeeding in giving myself microscopic cuts that sting with a renewed vigor with every attempt to fix what i have caused. how come i can’t clean it? why have i never been able to keep it clean? why do i keep dropping things?

other people don’t seem to drop things as much as i do, hell, it seems like they’re capable of juggling and twirling and making more of what they have. yet all i try to do is stand here, hold onto the one or two things i really care about, and fail even at that. if i don’t drop them, slipping through numb fingers, they explode in my face and it feels worse. so much worse to be attempting to stay on top of everything but be completely inept at it, to the point that nothing sticks.

i can’t feel my fingers as i sit here at work, staring blankly at screens and thinking on repeat how badly i want to go home - but which home? my apartment here, where i am going to school? or the house my family resides in, where i feel less alone? it doesn’t matter - i drop things in both places; i drop things everywhere. it’s like a mantra on repeat, beseeching, leave, leave, leave, leave, leave. because my mind thinks it is easier to go, to avoid the maw of truth that i quite simply just have to push through.

but, eventually, like now, i become aware of the lack of sensation. the spiral happens, the slipping on the blood and the grimacing at newly realized pain that is not new at all. i take my time, gently pulling the shards from my own hands, refusing to show them to anyone else. it’s so routine at this point, the cycle of dropping and fixing and picking things up again, i don’t cry out. resigned to it, knowing the cycle never changes. i fix it by myself, handle it by myself, and turn to try again. hold things tighter, softer, gentler, intenser, intentionally, carelessly, preciously, every possible configuration, but it ends up the same. broken, healing, broken, healing, broken, healing, and unable to take tangible steps to mend it for the long-term. a week of peace, a month unmoored; the shattering is just as loud but familiar as it twists the knife of my awareness of a lack of control.

it’s always been this way.