An aversion to stillness
“I will not keep repeating the words sorry it’s been so long” I say to myself.
The interlude: in June I wanted to write something about the passage of time, turning 28, self-reflections. July; I wanted to write in time for Trans Pride, my rage, my sorrow, my transition, gender joy and freedom. In August, I paused just enough to romanticise a week of near-anonymity in another city, long enough to squeeze out a few words, long enough to recognise internal havoc—
August 5th 2025
I touch down into a bed of tender blues
The air, thick with humid heat, welcomes me to slow my breath
Weighted limbs begin to float
As if my bones know something I don’t
Letting myself expand, contract, release
I can feel my skin become elastic again
I can bend in any direction, fold and stretch and double over
Malleable and warm, I melt away in the quiet rain
Twilight lingers longer here, coating everything in a soft haze
I’m peering into dimly-lit bars, looking to find familiar strangers
Haloed lights guide me back to a bed that isn’t mine
For a short time I can be anyone
I can be anywhere
The ticking clock inside me stops
In May I was scattered, and I could blame the external things in my life that had me existing in survival mode. September is suddenly here, and everything is different. I live in a neighbourhood I love, with people who feel safe, I am walking-distance from my friends, my life feels more normal. I am searching for reasons why I still feel scattered, and the answer I keep coming back to; I cannot face myself.
I underestimated the toll that “survival mode” would leave on me. Coping mechanisms that once worked well to keep me sane the first few months of the year quickly became ineffective or harmful after circumstances shifted.
My external world has changed, but my energy is still locked in place; restless, scattered, running. My brain is good at protecting me from whatever it fears I’m not safe to feel, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed it consciously. The somatic therapy is working, to a degree; I can recognise that I am disconnected from my body, not feeling things fully, aware of the protective bubble my brain has placed me in - rather than stumbling around in the dark, like I was before. Knowing something and doing something about it are two different things, however.
I am itching to get out of my skin
Tension in every part of me makes me paradoxically avoid real rest, stretching, or any of the things that would alleviate some pain
Tendons stretched like tight ropes across vast valleys
Whatever this landscape is within me, now is hostile and dry
I know that I need to slow down. I know that I need to sit with it. I know that I need to stop moving, to catch up to myself, to settle, so that my body can feel real, so that I can stop thinking feelings and start feeling them. I know how to do these things (or at least I am learning). I have the tools. I have the resources. I keep telling myself “I don’t have the time!”
No, I do.
I am out of practice, I am scared. I am bad at being bad at things. I hate being a beginner. I carry this aversion to stillness because to be still would mean to notice all the ways in which my body doesn’t feel right. All the discomfort in my bones. To not just notice, but to feel.
I have time
I have time
I have time
I cannot be still
I cannot be still
I cannot be still
To hear every sour thought and nasty whisper. To be still would force me to hold myself, to sit with the agitated child who feels pain but cannot express it.
Around the time I dropped out of school, I lost a couple of years, catatonic—
Stillness, then, was not something I chose but something I physically couldn’t help. I was dangerously depressed, agoraphobic, a bit of a loner. I had a boyfriend and couple of close friends, but even they did not really know the full extent of how I spent most of my days alone, trapped in my body. Or in reality, trapped in my mind, disconnected from my body. When I think of that lost time I start to panic, like I can’t breathe. I want to be living life, not watching it pass by. I think, in part, stillness fills me with that same feeling now. I have to tell myself that keeping myself alive is not lost time, even if I can’t remember most of it. I struggle to believe my own words, and the luxury of time now fills me with guilt.
I have time
I have time
I have time
I cannot be still
I cannot be still
I cannot be still
The two bounce back and forth in conversation
Speaking over each other, repeating
“I have time” a bitter judgement
“I cannot be still” a frantic plea
I know what I need to do. To learn to be still, to be gentle with myself. I am so close but still locked out, I can feel all the aches that need tending and it is best I don’t focus on them
Instead of crying now I just switch off
I am so scared of this state of being because what if this is all I am? I’ve reached the core and it’s plastic
Like opening up a corpse to find a hard toy instead of a heart
Maybe if I melt it under a magnifying glass then it could be liquid for a moment and moulded into something that looks right
Is that what I’ve done with myself? Moulded the outside to look right? Real?
The inside still the same, unchanged
Plastic trees in a plastic valley, the landscape is dry because it is not alive
Self-help therapied analytical husk, surface-level development
Jumping from one thought to the next, I am burning out in exhaustion
An ugliness that questions itself leaks out from the cracks when I slow down
Every awful belief that held me trapped
I think perhaps it is the glue that holds me together
I think I am still stumbling in the dark
My body cries out for stillness and I hear;
I am safer on the move
