I was sitting on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand and my eyes half-open. I’d been running on fumes for weeks—three and a half to five hours of sleep a night, if I was lucky. I could hear my wife reading a bedtime story down the hall to our youngest. I was waiting, and not doing anything important. I was just playing some dumb, flick-and-collect game on my phone that one of my kids probably downloaded. I couldn’t describe the game to you now if you asked me.
It wasn’t fun or interesting or useful. It was just… nothing.
Which, at that moment, was exactly what I wanted.
I wasn’t distracting myself from the present as much as I was trying to dull the future. I knew what tomorrow held: too much to do and not enough time to do it. So I played the game. I desperately needed sleep but I knew sleep meant starting over again in a few short hours.
I was tired. More than that, though, I was tired of being tired. In that moment, seated on the bed, playing that game, I was disappearing into something small, quietly, and completely meaningless.
And that’s what numbing is.
We don’t always notice it when it’s happening. It never looks like anything dramatic. Sometimes it’s scrolling. Sometimes it’s snacking. Sometimes it’s throwing yourself into work that doesn’t really need to be done just so you can feel productive.
Sometimes it’s a puzzle game you don’t even like.
In that moment, I wasn’t resting. I wasn’t being still. I wasn’t recovering. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just floating somewhere between exhaustion and avoidance, not wanting to feel what I knew was waiting for me.
It would be impossible to count the number of times that scenario has repeated itself.
It won’t be the last.
There have been long seasons of my life where “being helpful” was how I numbed. Solving other people’s problems kept me from facing my own. It felt good. It made me feel valuable. But it also became a way to avoid stillness. To avoid reckoning with where I was and what I needed.
The temptation to numb doesn’t always show up in the things we label as “bad.” Sometimes, it hides inside our strengths. The things people admire in us. The ways we show up, go the extra mile, stay busy, stay strong.
But numbing isn’t the same as coping.
And avoidance isn’t the same as rest.
The hardest part about numbing is that it usually works just well enough to keep you from changing. You don’t spiral. You don’t break. You just get… stuck.
Stuck in this state of half-rest and half-feeling.
Stuck in habits that dampen the noise without actually bringing peace.
And that’s what I was doing on the edge of the bed. Choosing stuck over sleep. Numbness over rest. Not because I’m lazy or careless. But because sometimes the weight of everything (family, work, expectations, fear) feels too heavy to hold all at once. And numbness, for a brief moment, lets you pretend you’re not carrying anything at all.
But here’s what I’m learning: that moment doesn’t last. The weight returns. The noise comes back. The game ends, or doesn’t, and nothing’s really changed.
And beneath it all, my body still needs rest.
My mind still needs clarity.
My heart still needs care.
The thing I reached for didn’t meet any of those needs. It just pressed pause.
I’m not trying to demonize the small comforts we reach for. Some of them help. Some of them remind us we’re still human. But when I consistently reach for things that delay the discomfort instead of helping me heal, I start living in a shallow version of my life.
And I want more than that.
I want real rest, not just escape.
Presence, not just distraction.
Peace, not just quiet.
That night, I eventually set the phone down and slid under the sheets and fell asleep within seconds. I don’t remember what time my wife came to bed. I just remember waking up hours later, still tired, still behind, but a little clearer.
The temptation to numb doesn’t disappear, but I’m getting better at recognizing it sooner.
And that’s something.
I don’t always know what to do with the weight I carry. Some days I still reach for the easy thing, the soft thing, the thing that lets me forget for a few minutes. But more and more, I’m starting to notice when I’m doing it. And noticing changes things. Not all at once, but slowly.
And that is enough.
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