june 24 bfd
Yesterday I wrote about being in a bad place, mental health wise. If you don't want to click, the TL;DR is that I got levelled by a panic attack. In truth I'm still feeling the aftershocks and reverberations ~30 hours later. My vision is still a bit blurry. There's a high pitched sound in my ears. My pelvic floor is still hypotonic and is causing issues with my hip and my sciatic nerve.
So, yeah, physically I'm a wreck. But somewhere in the late afternoon my brain came back online. It's bruised, sure, but I'm lucid. I can think clearly. I am safe, I am loved, and I am lucky.
Trauma is a funny thing. Sometimes it sits on your chest, sometimes it sits on your shoulder, and sometimes it's thin as a contact lens and soft as a whisper. But it's there. And you know it's there. And sometimes you can't not think about it. And when you think about it, your body reacts. Even now, skin feels thin, plasticky, and cool to the touch like the wrapper on an ice cream bar. I feel better, clearer, but my jaw is still clenched like I'm bracing for a punch. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. I have been bracing for impact for forty years.
And when you have a jaw like this, and when you brace for too long, you become a certain kind of person. A person who can't stand the pain so he glorifies it. A person who thought his pain defined him and made him interesting. And, as a result, I became one of those men who thought everyone else had to get harder (blah blah blah) because life is pain (blah blah blah) and anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.
When I think back to that iteration of me, I have to try not to cry. I want to go up to him and tell him I'm future him, and that we're going to be okay, but also that he is okay, and that he needs to trust that. I want to help him separate the stuff from the stuff. I want to take him to an upscale department store and make him try on clothes made of silk and then ask him how he feels about himself, and if he would like to feel like that again. I want to show him how to be open, how to be soft, and how to ask for help.
I'm rewatching an old show right now and in one of the last episodes of the series, the main character realizes the terrible, terrible truth about something. That truth is a leitmotif throughout the series. His nearest and dearest try to get him off a path to ruination, but he refuses, because he is certain he is right, because he needs to be right, because there are big, big implications if he is wrong. But he is wrong. And when he finally gets that he is wrong, when it is all almost over and he has a gun pointed at his head, he finally gets it. Actually he doesn't get it as much as he accepts it. He relents. He unclenches. His posture changes. And when he says "I gave up everything and I wasted my life for a lie," the timbre of his voice is sheathed in regret. In that moment you watch him understanding all the things he didn't do because he was so single-minded, so unmovable. His crusade stopped being about doing right and was only about being right.
Life is a tragedy, but you don't have to get on your knees and wait for the axe to fall. There's living to be done and that's your fuckin' job.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch read
🌳 grass my
🌷 now book
Be good to yourself.
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