“Your ribcage is protecting your heart,” she said, as she skillfully worked the tension out of my back.
I was having a massage, with a therapist that knows me well.
“But it’s more than that,” she added. “It’s like…..BEARhugging your heart.”
I have no idea what that means. But it brought me comfort.
It’s very dark, and narrow where I am right now. I’m okay with that-but if it makes you uncomfortable, you may want to stop reading.
I thought I would cry during the massage-I thought it would break me open, crack the protective shell the painfully tight muscles provide. I didn’t. I was surprised. Instead, as soon as I walked in the room, as soon as she said “How are you?” I burst into tears, and didn’t stop until I got on the table. I told her it was very dark, and very narrow where I am, and I didn’t want to use words to talk about all of the things. (which I then proceeded to start to do anyway, and did for a while, and then stopped abruptly.)
I got on the table, and perhaps by inertia, kept crying for a bit. Just until she came in and turned on the music and got the oil. Once her hands started running over my painfully tight back muscles, the tears stopped.
I just allowed her to work out the tension. What she could, anyway. And I didn’t cry. I kept waiting to start again. But I didn’t.
I felt more present than I have in a long time. Maybe since my father died. Maybe since before that. I don’t know-because when I go into the dark and narrow, I lose track of time.
The darkness feels both scary, and protective. So does the narrowness. This is the story of my life-of my inner life, anyway. The things that I most long for, scare the hell out of me. The things that are not scary do not truly feed me. I was too young when my traumas happened to understand, but I surmise that I created a dark and narrow place to hide because it was the only way I knew how to feel safe.
I don’t realize I’m in the dark and narrow place right away-that’s part of it. That is how trauma responses work. The last weeks and months have been up and down, more down than up recently. I miss my father with a ferocity I didn’t anticipate. I know, you can never know how it will feel until happens. Whatever. I worried about losing my dad, it was a fear that hummed under the radar for almost 40 years, my whole adult life. And especially these last three and a half years….knowing it was coming, not knowing exactly when or how. The most painful part was watching him decline-to go from a vibrant, larger-than-life person to someone who mostly suffered, slept, and went to doctors. Some say with anticipatory grief, when death finally comes it can be easier, the grief less cutting. I get that-when Amy died, it was total darkness and beyond narrow, for a long time. I went down. The shock of that, the out-of-orderness of it, the fact that she was my peer….all of that on TOP of her being gone was almost unbearable.
But parental death is not out of order, and my dad’s death was anything but a shock. And yet I find myself in this dark and narrow place, with all of my past losses (including Amy), with my traumas flying around whatever space I find myself in, with all of the feelings I was never able to process. All there, all with me, all the time. No break from them. Even the massage wasn’t a break from them-although, it was a comfort.
After Amy died, I remember saying often: I don’t want to be comforted OUT of my grief.
I want to be comforted IN it.
The massage comforted me IN the dark and narrow. There is no comforting me OUT of it.
I’m not hopeless, I told my therapist. I wanted to reassure her. I am a therapist, I well understand the concern for safety. I’m not unsafe.
Promise.
Recently, I have felt….well, lost. I thought? Not hopeless, but hopelessly lost. Everything feels different, out of whack. But as I’m writing this (literally), I don’t think I’m lost. I think I’m found. VERY found. I’m here with the box where I keep all of my old emotional stuff neatly re-packed, and it’s blown open. Fuck that, I’m IN the box. I’m IN the past losses and early childhood traumas and a pandemic and a dead father.
I feel tremendous relief just putting my finger on this, like I can just sink down into the darkness, into the box of all my pain, like a kid in a ball pit. And I’m no longer afraid of all this pain, because in naming it, I’ve plugged something back in that had become disconnected. I’ve reconnected to myself. In all of the darkness, the narrowness, the pain and grief, I’m still here. And it’s so much easier to feel like shit when you just LET yourself.
No big finish here, folks. I’m just here in the narrow darkness sharing my truth. If you are still reading-thank you. My gratitude for your witnessing.
[image: some light leading into a dark tunnel, with the right side of the screen just BLACK; debris on the ground]