Sometimes I wonder if I'm simply standing in the same place I was two years ago. Knee deep in the swirling winter water, with the tide creeping up the length of my legs - a trail of gooseflesh - and the chill of the Pacific seeping into my bones.
Sometimes I wonder if I am on the edge of transformation or collapse.
Sometimes I wonder if the distance I have travelled over the land to get to this shore means anything if I am held here by the water's firm boundary.
Sometimes I wonder if I have the capacity to shift from the ways of knowing and being I have used to reach this place, into some new form that can carry me forward.
Sometimes I wonder if this is the beginning, the end, or both.
Sometimes I wonder if I have anything left in me to transform these circumstances and pull meaning from their depths, like strings of bull kelp ripped from the sea bed.
Sometimes I wonder what I am spinning here, a new story or endless circles.
Sometimes I wonder at hope, determined to sink my teeth into it, clawing for it; other times this becomes harder.
Sometimes I wonder about the way we categorize or pathologize reactions. Are they truly inappropriate or abnormal given the circumstances? Who gets to decide this without looking deeper; through a lens of trauma?
Sometimes I wonder what is true and who gets to define this.
Sometimes I wonder how to trust though there is something so instinctual in this need that I marvel how it seems impossible to lose this entirely, even in the face of repeated breaches.
Sometimes I wonder how to keep building myself by hand.
Sometimes I wonder at the echoes I still hear ringing in my ears, are they there or am I simply responding to what once was?
Sometimes I wonder who gets to define "resilience" because surely that belongs to those living the experience.
Sometimes I wonder at the "how" to keep going, or more painfully, the "why."
Sometimes I wonder how I could ever think this way. The "why" comes back into view and my memory of its absence seems unimaginable.
Sometimes I wonder about the others lives I might have been living and who that person could be.
Sometimes I wonder how much simultaneous damage and hope the institution of psychiatry has offered to people over the years.
Sometimes I wonder about the idealization of a certain kind of healing that overlooks the day-to-day subtlety of what it is to be human and live through this.
Sometimes I wonder, but here I am living.
Sometimes I wonder, here I am living.
I wonder, I am living.
I am living.
Living.
- S.
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