Trapped in a paper (cut
me deep) maze of fear,
power stripped
from me here, affixed
to the wall (merely
a pinhole at the center,
the softest place to push
through), knees tucked beneath
the hollow of clavicles, red dappled
palms cup a bony
outcropping of elbow; folded
into something
small, scrapped.
Who or what do you feel a need to protect?
What makes you feel safe or unsafe?
How does the fight/flight/freeze response manifest in you?
No sudden movements, please. I’ve hit that place, that pain-fear edge where the sudden rasp of a leaf scraping pavement is startling enough to switch on the cortisol floodgates, where normal household discord sends me feral, curled into the furthest corner I can find, shivering in the dark weighted chasm between their intent and their impact.*
I’ve tried explaining it, using my own language and signposts, using the words of neutral experts. The way my body holds decades of stored data, a dense repository that flags a perceived threat, gathers information about voices and faces and body language and circumstance, remembers for next time, crafts the safety plan. The way the plan rarely functions in the face of the threat. The way they can tell me over and over that there’s no threat in the first place, that there never was, that I can try to convince myself, gather the courage to turn toward instead of away, even as every piece of sensory and extrasensory information is screaming danger. The explosion, the meltdown, the circuit reinforced, the threat confirmed.
That’s how my body learned to survive. There’s so much work I want to do to heal it, so much work I’m already doing, but with current life circumstances being what they are, it’s clearing leaves from the drain during a downpour. The water rises, destruction outpacing protection.
I’m trying so hard. We’re almost there, sweet girl. We’re almost there.
*The “intent versus impact” distinction is one I’d long tried to articulate, usually through tortured analogies around stepping on feet or fender benders. I owe the clarity of phrase to the anti-racism educators whose work I’ve been following and learning from.
Yorumlar