Yesterday I was fairly blase about a quarter of my finger being numb. Today I see the scar and don’t think much of it, but the thought of permanent numbness is wigging me out. It’s not like I need feeling in it for it to work. Perhaps it is the finality of the injury: this will never work as it once did, and I will die with it not working as it once did.
Shortly after we first met, Jonathan and I had a conversation about emotional experience that set my little brain-wheels a-turnin’. It seems I articulated something I hadn’t fully considered yet, which is rare for me — I usually only express opinions I’ve carefully thought through — but the more I think, the more I realize its validity. It’s not that we experience less as we get older; rather we experience things for the first time less often. Experiencing things for the first time requires a lot of time and energy, both during the thing and then in post-processing. Consequent similar experiences are compared to the initial template, requiring less output from the individual.
Really we just expend less and less energy until we must do nothing at all, and then we fade away.
This was a lot more upbeat in my head. Hey, where’s the funny photoset about existentialism? Damn.
4 Comments
Sorry about the thumb
. I think the numbness will be temporary, if it’s anything like the numbness I had in my thumb after my surgery on it several years ago. It hurt like hell for a while, but after the pain went away, it was numb to the touch for several more weeks. I don’t know if it was because of the stitches or the medication or something else or a combination of the above, but it did go away after a while…I guess it just took time for things to regrow.
*big hug*
*points above*….err, I mean, “sorry about the finger.”
*hugs again*
I was also going to say that the numbness could be temporary. I had jaw surgery ten years ago (almost) and lost all feeling in my upper jaw for awhile – as in, if I brushed my teeth, I could not feel my gums, particularly around my front two teeth.
I was told that might be permanent, but sensation eventually returned.
… and I whacked the little finger on my left hand with a knife twenty years back and still some days I brush up against the scar and realize I have no nerves, no feeling there.
Your Frankenfinger will remind you of … the fact it’s not the finger you had lo’ those many years, but that’s not ,em>really bad, is it?
My heart’s been doing this beat-skippy thing lately, which has made me far more aware of the thud-thud-thud-skip-thud of my heart than I ever was.
Your Frankenfinger will make you more mindful, which is not a bad thing to be.