The year I got my smell back

I was feeling sad the other night. Melancholy. Not depressed sad. A sadness of memory. Grounded. Connected. As if empathy was calling out. I'm here. Emotion as portal. Mary-Kate said, "Do you remember when I first met you? You said you were jealous of my emotion, my ability to feel things." I was dead. Like a stone. Moving around. A living carcass. Not able to sense. I remember the first moment I knew I had lost my sense of smell. A high school student was complaining of the smell of manure from the farmer's fields. "It's not that bad," I said. And then other kids mentioned the intensity. I smelt nothing. Our own reality seems like the truth at the time. As it is our truth. Our way of being in the world. And everyone else must be experiencing the same thing. What is not-my-reality? What is it to smell? To feel. I remember what an orgasm used to feel like. And then it died. The feeling lost. The pipes working, flowing, moving. No feeling. Dead. And I relied on my eyes. I experienced the world through my eyes, as if they could feel. I could project what it was like to feel through the picture of my world. But there was no feeling. It was a guess. A guess from what it felt like. From the fading memory of emotion. As if I was watching my life on TV. Experiencing it visually. I thought I wasn't capable of feeling anymore. Age. Work. Stress. Responsibility. It was all necessary to survive. So my body was sacrificed. A side effect of living as a successful adult. A working adult. Someone who takes care of himself. Pays the bills. I searched for ways to crack open my body. Yoga. Get in there. Hockey. Unlock that portal. I must be inside there. Meditation. I must be. Beer. Feeling something. Am I there? And then we had River. And I had space. Space to be. To open. To take things in. To absorb. To de-toxify. De-layer. And very slowly, I started to emerge, come into focus. And I could smell. River's diaper. I can smell it. I can smell it. Hallelujah. And cilantro. Oh, cilantro. And I could feel. Sadness. Yay sadness. Not dead. I am sad. Yes. Oh, yes. And orgasm. It's back. Returned. Uncovered. Nostalgic. A complexity to it. A nuance. Not just one feeling. But a mix of layers, of variation, subtle and strong. And it's a fucking roller coaster, this feeling thing, but damn, it's nice to be on the ride.