A gentle nudge into the core of my soul
Or: following story-truth as a path to self
Yesterday my partner and I brought a mattress onto the roof to watch the sunset. As the darkness grew, the tears I had been holding began leaking out, my forehead on his chest.
How much is too much crying? I want to cry with you, but I’m afraid it’ll go on too long. Will you tell me if you want me to stop? I’ll just cry for five minutes, and then I’ll be done.
He spoons me as I sob, wet streaks forming on his bicep. I count the songs passing. I’ll stop crying after this one. No, this next one. Just one more.
Eventually I pull myself together and I roll back to face him. He asks me what I was crying about and the tears are back, body-wracking sobs. Again, I stop them before they have finished moving through me. It’s not an explicit thought but the undercurrent is in the shape of I am not allowed to cry this much. He’ll leave me if I ask for him to hold me as much as I want him to. I have to ask for less.
I am afraid to touch this deep pit of need in myself. I am afraid it will never end. It is part of life to walk around with a gnawing desire in me. I can’t ask to be held while I cry through this whole pit; it’s bottomless, revolting.
I had said I would leave now but I cannot move. A tear slides down my cheek and I cover it with the blanket. I am not full, not satiated, I need more. I hate that I need more so I languish, do you want me to leave?, never asking for as much as I want and never fully satisfied.
~~~
I started writing essays in June 2021. The first one was on coming home to my body, sinking into it and feeling the joy of being embodied for the first time. The gentle swish of linen on my calves as I walked.
As I continued a deep trauma healing process over the next few years,1 I wrote a couple essays per week. Hours in the public library on weekends, days off. I was prolific, always focusing on what was real. What was happening in the core of my being? I wrote two hundred thousand words, three novels’ worth, as I documented the moments and movements of my own growth. This writing was integration, meaning making, tethering the joys and pains of my process to something real and tangible.
At its best, writing is a practice of bringing me back to that sense of core. The writing that is True always comes from that place, touches it in others.2 As I walk home after writing something True the air fills my lungs a bit more easily, the energy in my bones flows a bit more smoothly.
~~~
My weepiness on the roof yesterday accompanied a disconnection from my core. Haziness around what I’m feeling, wanting; what’s real.
As I sat down to write today I couldn’t find the place to write from. The page sat empty for longer than usual. I remembered there was a time when I could go inwards, feel solid and sturdy in the column of aliveness running through me, feel its texture and flavor. Self-assured in what I feel, what I want. Instead, as I began writing today, I found wobbliness inside, the way images blur right before tears fall.
Two hours, a tea, 500 words, four edits. My breaths are clearer now. A tinge of stronger resilience. I can do things. It is the writing itself that brings me into closer contact with myself.
~~~
I am settled in my bones, my body grounded and whole. The need for more care is still within me, but its urgency is dampened. It coexists with my other desires, the wholeness of my being. Rather than being consumed by it, I can hold it within me.
I message my partner, not a collapsing I’m sorry I was so emotional yesterday – the message I’d send still blurry and searching inside – but rather a how was your day? and some logistics. I’m back in my maturity, the adult self in my core.
This is the gift that writing gives me: many small nudges back into what’s True, what’s real. A gentle pattering and peering into the core of my soul.
I used to avoid sharing that I’ve been in this healing process for years, because I remember in the first bit of it I really wanted someone to tell me it would be over soon, I would be okay soon. So, if that’s you: I can’t tell you how soon you will reach X milestone or Y feeling of okayness, but what I can say is that each individual step along my journey felt markedly better than the one before. Some days and weeks were worse than what preceded, but on the order of a couple months, things consistently got better.
Relatedly, Tim O’Brien’s concept of story truth vs happening truth – that a story’s truth can be about the emotions it evokes rather than the “facts” of the plot points: https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2017/06/20/the-textual-truth-behind-tim-obriens-the-things-they-carried/
Related Essay from Edge of Light
The Five Personality Patterns details five ways we adapt to challenges in childhood that carry through to patterns we fall into as adults. The second pattern -- Merging -- is the pattern I described being stuck in at the beginning of this post: needing more but unable to ask for it, ashamed and weepy, believing that I’d never be satiated.
