When Numbness Starts Feeling Safer Than Living
By Natasha C Akinfolarin #DislexicPoet
Some poems come from emotion.
Some come from memory.
And some come from surviving a version of yourself you never thought you would become.
The Land of the Lost is not really about drink or drugs alone.
It’s about emotional disappearance.
The slow fading that happens when pain becomes too heavy to carry awake.
People often imagine addiction as chaos, drama, rock bottom moments. (& sometimes it is)
But sometimes it is much quieter than that.
Sometimes it looks like exhaustion.
Like not wanting to think anymore.
Not wanting to remember.
Not wanting to feel your own mind turning against you.
That is what this poem explores.
The line:
«“I found it at the bottom of a glass,”»
Is not just about alcohol.
It is about escape.
About finding temporary silence in something destructive, because silence inside yourself feels impossible otherwise.
I am 17 years clean and sober now.
But I will never pretend getting clean was easy, because it wasn’t.
And I will never pretend life suddenly became perfect afterwards either.
Some days are still difficult.
Some wounds do not disappear just because the substances do.
Getting clean did not magically erase trauma, anxiety, grief, or the parts of myself I was trying to outrun.
It simply meant I finally had to face them awake.
I think that is something people do not talk about enough.
Recovery is not one moment.
It is not one decision.
It is a continuous process of learning how to stay present inside your own life, even when parts of it still hurt.
What mattered to me while writing this poem was honesty.
Not polished honesty.
Not inspirational honesty.
Just truth.
The people inside this poem are not monsters.
They are not caricatures.
They are hurting people trying to outrun themselves for one more night.
That quiet line:
«“Like yeah… you too.”»
Might actually be the saddest moment in the entire poem for me.
Because addiction often creates a strange form of silent recognition between people.
A wordless understanding.
You can see it in someone’s eyes before they even speak.
The poem also explores numbness becoming comfortable.
That frightened me when writing it.
Not the chaos.
The ease of it.
The way survival patterns slowly stop feeling temporary and start feeling normal.
That is why the poem says:
«“It don’t chain you down
It softens you”»
Because destruction is not always violent.
Sometimes it happens quietly, softly, patiently.
This poem belongs inside Fractured Mind because it deals with emotional fragmentation, identity loss, dissociation, and survival through detachment.
At its core, The Land of the Lost is about what happens when someone stops trying to live and starts trying not to feel.
And sadly, more people understand that feeling than society likes to admit.
Thank you for reading
Your DislexicPoet🖤