Numb

Summary: Some people are deaf, some people are blind, but I, I was numb. I could touch the softest silk and not feel a thing. A spider could crawl down my arm, and I would never know. Physically I couldn't feel, and that effected me emotionally...until I met Him.

Anesthetized, apathetic, asleep, benumbed, brutal, callous, cantankerous, churlish, cold, cold fish, cold-blooded, cold-hearted, cool cat, crotchety, cruel, deadened, exacting, feelingless, hard, hardened, heartless, icy, inanimate, inhuman, insensate, insensible, insensitive, iron-hearted, merciless, obdurate, pitiless, ruthless, sensationless, senseless, severe, stony, surly, thick-skinned, tough, unamiable, uncaring, uncompassionate, uncordial, unemotional, unkind, unsympathetic.

All the words above were synonyms to one word, unfeeling. Numb. That is exactly what type of person I am.

While some people can't see, talk, and hear, I can't feel. I was born with a Nervous System dysfunction and some how the doctors couldn't explain why I couldn't feel.

It wasn't easy growing up different in 1880's. It got worse as I grew older. I learned to ignore the taunts and cruel laughter pointed my way. Soon, though, I learned to take the emotions and turn them to my physical feelings, allowing me to not feel the hurt and pain, the happiness and sadness. Everything I took indifferently and nobody could change that.

Now, at sixteen, I sit at the end of an empty dock thinking back on how everything turned out. It didn't bother me. I wouldn't let it. Being abandoned by everyone wasn't as bad as it seemed. Having no name, for I had forgot it like my mother forgot me, no friends and not much of a family, it didn't seem to me I was so bad off.

I worked every day on a fishing boat called Daybreak, and got payed ten cents an hour. I lived in an old house in the middle of Brooklyn, and had money enough. I realized I had grown up to fast, but nowadays every kid does.

Watching the sunset, I started whistling a little tune. I had learned it from a boy who worked on the fishing boat with me. His name was Nine and he was real funny. He was the closest thing to a friend I had.

I don't talk much while working, mostly because I wanted to show them not all women were useless, because everyday there was some comment about women in kitchens. I ignored them, knowing I wouldn't get fired because I was such a hard worker.

And everyday I came to my little house smelling like fish, but I didn't mind because I knew I'd done something. I had worked hard for the money.

Usually I was put working with the net as it came in because sometimes there would be jellyfish from the sea caught in it, and I couldn't feel anything if they stung me.

But, now I just watched the sunset, not worrying over tomorrow, but living in the now. When your aware that any moment could be your last, you tend to live more in the now. I could have died as a baby, I never felt anything so I never knew when I was badly hurt. But, I was glad I had lived this long.

Darkness came at my back, seeming to envelope me and hug me, and I decided to make my way home.

Standing up, my eyes caught a pair of blue ones. Two docks down were where the Brooklyn Newsies hung out. Jumping into the River, playing marbles and poker. But, this evening I seemed to catch the eye of their leader.

I stared back into the steel blue eyes so emotionless like my own. They studied me, my trousers my wet hair and shirt. A look of disapproval in his eyes. I was a woman, working like a man, dressed like a man, and their was nothing he could do about it.

Giving a taunting smirk, just to make him angry, I turned on the heel of my boot and stalked on down the dock, heading into the middle of Brooklyn, the place I hated most, but somehow I couldn't leave.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything you recognize, (like Spot) and I don't own the disease, I'm pretty sure it's real, (it's gotta be) so anywho please Review.