There’s a lot going on, and my energy’s been scattered. I haven’t been phoning it in (when I switch my attention to this space, I’m fully present), but I’ve also not been focused on this part of recovery.
Trying to manage an intense professional life while (mis)handling some pretty severe neurological symptoms. Navigating specialists and diagnostics and labwork (if I hear the words “rule out” once more I may lose what’s left of my sanity, though my current doc does this really weird thing where he listens to me, and works with me to figure out what might be causing them and how best to address).
The past creeps back, though. It (She, more than He) finds me in the twisted landscapes of my dreams, roars though my ears at a quirk of pronunciation, wafts the scent of cigar on the air beneath my nose and flattens me.
I've always spent too much time in my head. It’s the default. I’ve always valued my mind above all else, believed it was the only thing about me worth anything – other than those astonishing months, a decade and a half ago, when my body carried and then fed my child. I was chastised and ridiculed for its shape, which ranged from utterly average to obese before the unexpected, unintended slide down the scale to a place that frightened me, then recovering to settle where it is now, a shape that still causes cognitive dissonance.
I’m always flubbed at athletics, dance, etc. Learning that my body understood what to do in yoga was a welcome surprise; the ability to shut down my mind and allow my body to let go with the right partner (the “don’t marry best-sex-you-ever-had-guy” axiom is FALSE) was another.
And my body hurts. All the time. The pain scale is worthless; the rating is binary. Can I tolerate it, or not? And even when it’s “or not,” I still do, because what choice do I have? My limbs don’t work properly; my balance is shit, my stamina, nonexistent.
Someone educated in the connection between trauma and chronic pain asked recently whether I found that my symptoms abated when I did my weekly #TWFT52 prompts, since I chose to make them part of my journey rather than simply preparing weekly content. And the answer was, is, no.
I thought about it. When I write, I start with the prompt, sit with it for a bit. Tap out a few phrases, stop, revisit. Find patterns and connections in the words, find the thread of a story. Adjust to highlight cadence, repetition. Land on the end result, without over-editing. I rarely take more than ten minutes.
And then, I step back. Read as an observer. Reflect on what I’ve found, connect it to memories, share with you the thoughts that follow. Sometimes it’s an expansion, other times, a tangent. Cross my fingers that it’ll make some kind of sense to you, and hit “post.”
I’m still intellectualizing. Still processing above the neck. But my body remembers all of it.
I should know better. I’ve received training in the neurobiology of trauma, here in this work. I’ve read and researched and accepted the idea that the long, drawn-out history of sexual abuse is directly connected to what’s happening to my body now. I know all of this.
Intellectually.
I think it’s time to go deeper. To work with recommended specialists who can help not only with my thought processes and patterns around all this, not only with my general energies, but in a more precise manner, who can locate and release the sense memories, the chemistry of hypervigilance, the physiological scars of self-protection.
I’m scared. I’m exhausted. I’m in so much pain, so much of the time, that it’s difficult to justify seeking more. I don’t want to keep breaking down, breaking myself, breaking open. But I think there’s something waiting for me on the other side.
I’m ready to find out what it is.
Much love,
Jess