“There are issues in your tissues” or so the saying goes with trauma. I fear I inhabit a traumatized body. My trauma responses show up in a myriad of anatomical systems.
It’s the hypervigilance of my eyes, the nervousness in my systems. My baseline is anxiety. Throw in chronic pain and you’ve got a rollercoaster of bodily signals screaming “notice this” but also “run away.”
I used to dissociate, now I am too aware and so, I feel it all.
The road of trying to make peace with this body is a perilous one. I reach for things to feel,
I reach for things to numb; it seems there are no answers outside of myself.
I find myself oscillating between trying to crawl out of this body and be present with it all at once. The result can be paralyzing.
I am distracted, achy, vulnerable and avoidant, and altogether uncomfortable. As I’ve come to know,
this is where growth tends to happen. It is lonely at times, to be so aware yet unsure.
Let me remember this, for I am not healed, but am healing. And so I write from this interstitial void where I reside.