Have you ever heard how our bodies can carry memories of our trauma within them?
I’ve experienced it a little before, crying during deeply effective yoga, or a really good massage, but having this abdominal surgery is stirring up all sorts of trauma.
Why?
Well the last abdominal surgery was smack dab in the middle of one of the worst years of my life, and I really didn’t get to deal with much of it at all.
So here is today’s podcast. It’s a healing step taken selfishly for me, one I should have taken ages ago, but haven’t because I hate to do anything that could remotely upset or hurt people. That isn’t my intention here, but it might be a side effect. Even knowing that has made me doubt doing this all day.
I have to stop impairing my own healing on the off chance my voice could upset someone, especially when I am only speaking my truth.
It hits me the hardest when I put down my luggage.
A stillness settles over me as my heart remembers you are no longer here to promptly sit on it while I try to put everything away.
I am defeated.
I will carry the memory of the loss of you with me for several more days before it settles back into the reality of my existence and the loss begins to be normal again.
You aren’t sitting on my lap and incessantly demanding I lie still to make up for the time we lost when I was away.
You aren’t rubbing against my face when I try to use the computer, insistent that all attention should be paid to you.
I’ve never had an easier time writing.
You aren’t tripping me on the stairs.
You aren’t batting my face in the night.
You aren’t.
In darkness under the bridge we sit,
your ashes secured in a wooden chest.
The tiny weight of you reduced further still
by the trappings of your final rest.
The loss of you pours from me in salty waves,
I’m nigh drowning in the undertow.
While alive your heart was joined with mine
with you dead, mine doesn’t know where to go.
Any dream I had of seeing you again
vanished with the puff of your last breath,
for what chance does hope really have
when faced with the harsh reality of death?
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M.Morehead
3.12.2020
Managing life with chronic illness requires savvy spoons