Is my body keeping the score?
My open attempt to make peace with who I was. Or maybe who I am. The end goal is murky.
I watched a man jump in front of a train last August. Loaded way to start out- I know. Before you even know my name, I’m telling you one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever experienced.
That’s a loaded topic too, trauma. Scary to talk about, even scarier to try to understand. My mom and I were having a conversation last week, about how we can feel the ways our bodies keep the score. My body has been keeping score as of late, I can feel it. My bones feel weaker these days, my head feels heavy. I wonder what the score is now, I wonder who’s winning.
I started out with the fact that I watched a man jump in front of a train last August. I mention that as a prologue of sorts. In some warped, twisted way, that was a beginning- some form of a beginning at least.
The change in me was sudden, it was intense. Everyone around me could feel it, but what’s worse, they could see it. My college roommate would frequently host quasi-interventions in our little dorm room. When she would find me hyperventilating on the floor of the bathroom, or listen to me talk to myself about how I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore.
It always went the same way, and it would always start with silence- right until she couldn’t handle the silence anymore.
Beg me to talk to my parents about seeing someone. Ask me to take some sort of medication (because nobody knows how to be around you when you’re like this). Sigh deeply when I would shake my head. Light a candle, roll a joint, hand it to me with her eyes closed.
Things are different now though, I think- I still find the change a little strange. I don’t know if being happy is comfortable yet. Sometimes I find myself smiling for a bit too long and I can feel something in me tighten up (this is the body keeping score, you’re seeing it happen now). The newness makes my every day just a bit more exciting, and I can slowly feel myself settling in to what it means to find happiness consistently.
I was talking on the phone with a dear friend of mine who just got back from a month abroad. We talked about the wonderful things that had happened since the last time we spoke, taking comfort in each other’s joy. The conversation hit a lull, I laughed and whispered, “did you ever imagine that this would be our lives a year ago?”
Because quite frankly, no I did not. Not in the slightest. I’m still not fully convinced that I’m nearly good enough to experience this kind of happiness yet. And I want to be good enough, I’m going to try my best to be good enough.
In two weeks I’ll be 700 miles away from home. And when I come back here in the winter things will be different, my favorite tree will be cut down and my childhood bedroom redone.
The more we move forward, the further away I am from who I was. But for now, I’m listening to songs I loved when I was 17 and I’m happy.
To the things that change and the things that don’t. May our bodies show us kindness.