Letting the Wave Move Through Me
My body can feel what it feels and I can still remain inside myself. The wave does not have to carry me away.
The air changes density when you must be near someone who once hurt you. There is a particular kind of body-knowing that lives in those rooms — the shallow breathing, the cool hands, the body climbing into its alert posture. These are not signs you are weak. They are signs you are paying attention, in the way you have been paying attention for years.
You are allowed to feel everything you feel in those rooms. The discipline being asked is not to feel nothing — it is to remain inside yourself while feeling it. To stay rooted — feet on the floor, hands in your lap, breath at its own pace — as the waves move through.
The waves will move. You do not have to push them away. You can let the cool hands be cool. You can let the breathing be shallow for a moment. You can notice all of it without becoming all of it. You are the body experiencing the wave. You are also the larger self that holds the body. Both things at once.
Small returns help — the feet on the floor, the texture of the chair, the slow inhalation, the single word said silently: here, here, here. These are not avoidance. They are tethering. They keep the larger self present even as the body does its honest work.
You will leave the room eventually. The body will release what it was holding. You will breathe more deeply on the drive home. You will pour the glass of water in the kitchen that is yours, in the home you have made. The wave will pass. You will still be standing. You have always been still standing. The shore takes the wave and remains. You are the shore.