funeral. I think about the accident.
She looks across the table at me and nods, glad that I’m keeping up, and adds, “But your body hangs on to all of it. And it hurts.”
I watch her eyes get big and excited now. She tells me that my body has been asking me to pay attention, using physical pain as a kind of alarm bell. If I’m able to release my emotional pain, she thinks I might be able to release my physical pain as well.
I let it sink in and think about what my body has been saying to me:
I’m tired.
I need you.
I’m hurting.
But I didn’t listen. I’ve been looking outside myself for direction instead of inward, putting all my hope in surgeries and medicines, in other people, but never in myself.
Nicole gets up from the booth. Before she leaves she talks to me about JournalSpeak, the practice she designed to help people let go of deep, repressed trauma. She teaches me the first step: making lists. I still love making lists.
I make lists so that I can remember. But the things I need to remember may be the ones I wish I could forget the most.
I wake up earlier than normal on Tuesday, back in Nashville. I get a glass of water and take a breath that seems to shake all the way in and all the way out. I decide to go through the exercise in my bedroom and sit down cross-legged on top of the covers. I let my eyes fall shut and try to connect with the Divine, the earth, and the sky.
“Show me where it hurts,” I say with my eyes closed.
I take out my black Walgreens notebook and create three lists like she taught me. The first is titled “Childhood.” I write down anything painful I can remember from when I was a little girl. It feels like nonsense.
Playground
Mom
Can’t read/not smart
Bathtub
White dance at Jackson Hall
The next list is called “Present Day,” and contains anything that comes up from ages eighteen until today. It doesn’t matter if the things seem small—if I remember, Nicole says, they’re important. I breathe in and continue:
Headaches
College. Binge eating.
I’m surprised when I think of it. For years, I convinced myself that college was a happy time, but the words arrive on the page and I remember. I was numbing my pain with food, overconsuming, then dieting. I was isolating and then showed up with a smile on my face.
I keep going, and one by one, painful memories I thought had disappeared return to me.
Jack and Allie
The church
US politics
Infertility
Daddy’s death
And on and on. I feel myself wanting to drift away. My mouth is dry and my heart is beating too fast. I take another sip of water and continue. The third list is “Personality,” all the masks I feel I must wear to feel safe in the world, to be loved and accepted:
Needs affirmation
Smiles when in pain
Tries to be good and accepted
Codependent
The lists can go on and on, but this is where I stop. The messy little scrawls look harmless on the paper, yet they hold so much weight for me, weight I’ve always felt but never really understood. I stare at the little crooked blue words knowing that they’re the gateway to pain, to darkness, anger, shame, ugliness—things I’ve never, ever allowed myself to feel, let alone express.
Next, I grab my computer. I’m supposed to write about the things from the list for twenty minutes every day, say the things I’ve never given myself permission to say or release, things that weren’t “good” that I’ve always felt but repressed. I’m nervous. I set the timer for twenty minutes, open my computer, and go.
Something comes over me. I place my fingers on the keys and they move. I don’t even have to think. The words on the list that are screaming the loudest open massive, gaping wounds I forgot that I even had:
I’m nine years old next to my beautiful mom, feeling like I’m not pretty enough.
I’m watching Jack’s eyes, a shade of brown I’ll never forget, glow wildly for Allie.
I’m watching myself talking from a stage to a large group of people and wanting to feel their love, craving it like a drug.
I hear myself moan and cry; I hear the keys hammering and hammering and hammering away. The timer goes off. I don’t look at what made it from my brain to the screen. Nicole told me not to. I just select it all and delete it. I continue the