Somatic flashback

Or — I'm stuck in the underworld and can't get out

The pain is visceral, glittering, and bright. It spreads like water, pooling and streaming, always moving and changing. Sometimes it is so bright I feel like I’ll break open from the pain.

I try so hard to follow it back to its source, to make some kind of meaning from it. Maybe it’s abandonment, violation, shock, horror, grief. Maybe it’s loneliness, alienation, always on the outside looking in at the easy life of those who were loved.

Maybe I’m being dramatic. But the pain takes me under anyway.

I have been on an underworld journey since March and I went in willingly. I knew there was something that needed facing, something that needed knowing. I had no idea what would happen or how much pain I would need to feel. Now it is September and I feel battered and broken down, crawling through what feels still like the bottom of a cave. I am disoriented and dehydrated and exhausted and I can’t take another revelation. I need the light.