Caught Surrendering

I’ve been aware of this for some time now: how it’s hard for me to engage in the world like I used to, or, how hard it is to allow my experiences to live in my body the way they once could. Before remodeling my mental state - a house in desperate need of renovation (leaky roof, poor plumbing, and a questionable foundation) - I was, and perhaps too tightly, in tune with both beauty and pain. Touching every goosebump as it rose and in turn touching the things that raised them; I never imagined this version of me could be replaced. I used to feel everything, all at once, all the time. I hated in riddles, loved without guardrails, caused pain in roundabouts; pushing always, against the grain - nothing was holy. Not from malice, no, I wasn't a craftsman of infliction - in my eyes, I was a practical dreamer. I saw beauty first and believed people would follow. I saw a world where things were beautiful, and people were in it. Back then, though, these people appeared as rarely as I did sober, I couldn’t look away from their absence, and this only served to fuel my heartbreak.

Nowadays, it’s not safe for me to feel, so I rarely do.

Just over a month after realizing I had hit rock bottom, I had learned a few new tricks. Box breathes, tapping, letting go, praying – but healing through mantras is like trying to fix a Wi-Fi connection with spiritual affirmations. There is no manual, and even if there was, I would never use it. I learn the hard way or no way at all.

I thought I was doing well, doing the real work, gaining weight and listening to my body’s needs. But this day the air felt off, feelings started creeping back while depression returned like an ex-lover with a key. At first, I thought I could cope my way out, tapping my body like some percussion instrument, a one-man drum circle, and breathing so box like I could have sworn my lungs were made of straight lines and corners. Like some crude pendulum of fate, the harder I pushed, the closer it got.

Out of fear of the impending panic attack and crisis that would so often come with feelings like these, I reached out for a tether back. I called my dad, confessing through shame my fall from grace, him listening, and then reminding me of what I already knew. He told me that feelings are meant to rise and fall, and that although stability is important - much like a heart rate monitor - our pulse of life should never go flat. I knew this because I heard once that whenever buffalo see storms lurking on the horizon, they run straight into it (which sounds wise until you remember they also used to run off cliffs). Anyways, they run into it so they will be out of the storm sooner. So, although I didn’t have their blind courage to run, I sat in the storm instead, caught surrendering, doing the real work - I was out soon after.

Nowadays, it’s not safe for me to feel, so I rarely do.

Three and a half years after realizing I had hit rock bottom, I read my poetry to a group of strangers who quickly became something else. It wasn’t my first time; I’d read weeks before, with shaky legs and the composure of a small dog during fireworks, I trembled my way through the open mic. Fear was my cue that I needed to do it. I met an artist there and that’s how I ended up in this circle, six sets of eyes and ears, waiting to listen. I joked to myself that it felt like Narcotics Anonymous for artists - each of us taking turns, confessing through verse, trading secrets for silent witness and free coffee. I felt safe here and found belonging surprisingly fast.

My turn arrived, and I pretended to flip through my pages, but I knew exactly what piece I needed to read - one that had been making my pocketbook especially heavy. I made it about three lines in before I choked, the lump in my throat pinning my tongue, nothing coming out but tears, the room’s air shrinking as fast as the floor beneath me. I was frozen in time as silent saltwater ran down my rose cheeks and my whole body began to heat. I apologized, because apparently even my tears have manners, and swallowed as much of my feelings as I could. I ugly cried my way through the rest of the poem and was met by heartfelt sighs and voices of consolement. The others didn’t move away, they moved closer. These people were really there with me in that moment. They saw the importance in what I was doing and told me not to apologize - I continued to do so instinctively. The artist after me shared theirs next, the mood of the room shifting as I sat there, attempting to process what had just happened – brushing it off like it was no big deal.

Six more poems, sighs and laughter, it was my turn again. This time, to not let the other pages stay asleep, and to not let the other poets think I was a total emotional wreck, I read out a shorter piece that didn’t hit so close to home. Of course, it still hit close to home.

I had time for one more, so I asked the group if they wanted to hear another sad one, I figured I might as well just go for it now. They humoured me, so, I read it out, this time with a bit more control over my emotions - or maybe just emotionally detached - and finished before I came to. I arrived at a room of more sighs and consolement, this time almost more than before. The host looked at me and said that he wished he could just grab my face and kiss my forehead, a comment he quickly said, “felt inappropriate”, of which I assured him it wasn’t. It did startle me though, the tenderness of that image - not the comment itself, but the simple fact that someone wanted to offer gentleness. Most usually the confession of my feelings was met with objection, not love.

He then said something that rang in my head for days after: that when we share ourselves to this depth, we shift things around inside, we wake up old trauma and reach cavities of grief that usually lay dormant. I told him I was fine; I wanted to move the spotlight off myself as badly as I wanted to convince myself I was okay. Little did I know, I was in for another ride on the trauma-train of fun.

I made it about forty-five seconds on my drive home, my breath shrinking as I tried to convince my nervous system not to collapse. I grasped at anything that could keep me from needing. I wasn’t going to make it. I called my dad, a pattern of hope, and he answered with a tone much different than the one inside my car. I struggled to utter through tears what was happening and asked if I could come over, his house being on my way home. He agreed, and before I could hang up the phone I was outside his house weeping in his arms. I felt like a child. He spoke softly and told me it was okay, both of us knowing that outside of the lives we had built, it wasn’t. We went inside and sat in a room lit only by the hallway, a pseudo-confessional booth. We spoke about what happened, or really, I spoke, and he listened. He gave me a chance to let it out and in moments shared insight and compassion. Seeing me in clear agony, he reminded me of the storm - the universe, never one to miss a callback. This time, we both knew what followed. I stopped resisting and welcomed the feelings, the pain, the grief. I embraced it with open arms – I was out soon after.

Nowadays, it’s not safe for me to feel, so I rarely do.

It’s confusing - how to love, or how to be loved - and that makes finding the reasons I've changed even more disorienting, even more disturbing. How can someone who has designed themselves on the premise of how deeply they can feel, or love, now be almost rid of it? My conclusion: that at one point, it wasn’t safe for me to feel. This isn’t that my desire was at one point to inflict pain onto others, although my trail of regrets would say otherwise, but the reason is that by feeling, I risked that possibility. It’s happened before, and it’s the potential that it will happen again that scares me.

The truth is, if I were to say I’ve fully overcome the weight of my trauma I’d be denying the truth to us both – there are tears that were never meant to stop flowing no matter how much healing, and I’m still healing. Understand that while I’ve learned to cope, there will always be pain, and I will always be grieving. I’ve only just learned how to survive with myself; to not let my pain hurt the people I love.

I just wish you could have been there, so I didn’t have to figure out how to explain it – I’ve just started the process of explaining it to myself.