Anatomy of a Good Day
The prolific mental story propagated by the egoic mind certainly claims to KNOW what a BAD DAY feels like. There’s never any question or cross examination. The small voice just says, today was too hard. And the feelings of small and incapable loom around the cellular memories, laying down another track of I can’t handle this. Because that’s just what the habit brain of the chronically ill paradigm does from time to time. Indeed our bad days can stack up, one after another for so long we might feel that the good days are behind us and it’s all downhill from here. Certainly that’s the story if we are stuck in the mud with our head down towards the ground, long forgotten how to look up because we’ve been cast down so many times before.
For some of us, depression and chronic illness are so tightly intertwined that folks may mistake causation for comorbidity. But being sad for our pain is part of how we can take care of our inner small voice that cries out for better days. In my own unspoken word, my tapestry places panic on the heels of POTS. Those are my dynamic duo which seem to dance a pas de deux on endless loop. Indeed there is so much simularity in the chemical fingerprints of the hyperadrenergic state and the perception of anxiety that even well meaning medical can miss the physiological clues and dismiss so many zebras as simply over emotional.
Coming on the heels of a rough couple of weeks, I find myself over sensitive if not also self deprecating in my inability to move on. I know logically who I am and the depth of my resolve which has carried me to the place I stand (or more aptly reclined on the ground, with a fan, hot pack, misting bottle and my legs propped up on the couch). But as the flood of past trauma memories come racing in, I asked my streetwise sage husband … why is it that you came through so much childhood pain (there was a lot of trauma, abuse, neglect, drugs, abandonment, scarcity etc.) and somehow you moved forward. I mean I know you get caught up in it now and Zen because I see your brain get tripped and you fall into past protective patterns. But most of the time you are solid and those awful experiences don’t live with you day to day. How is that?
“Well, for me, those things happened in the PAST. They aren’t happening to me right now.” he said matter of factly, “I’m safe now, and no one can hurt me that way again. Those things are in my PAST, and those things can NEVER happen AGAIN.”
I interrupted, because his southern drawl pauses are sometimes longer than my NY minute fast forward full stream ahead. And I asked some version of .. but why does it NOT feel that way for ME? I don’t have the body sense that any of it happened in the PAST. It’s like there’s no time / space continuum and they are all happening right now.
And while I’ve heard many explanations about trauma theory, not to mention more than four decades of therapy during my lifetime, the next words out of the wisdom of his old soul hit me if not like a ton of bricks then certainly a Jamaican midday tropical storm that flashes quickly at the hottest part of the day and soothes your over sunned skin that you should have protected with SPF, but it was the 70s and we thought olive oil and lemon juice was a thing.
He said softly and a little slower than before,
Because you had dysautonomia then, and you have dysautonomia now.
You did not leave your painful experiences in the past.
You live them still every day.
The wow moment for me was two fold (actually multifaceted but I can only take in so much right now) it rang true of course for me in a way that answered every question I had about why I can’t “get over” things like “normal people” do.
But more than that, in those words in that precise moment of space and time .. it felt like someone SAW ME. Which of course he has since he met my IMVU avatar all those years ago.
It does not dismiss how hard it is for both of us at times. It is. It is really HARD. Because those old pain body stories that he has, they come up every once in while and those swiss cheese moments of our past when they rise at the same time make for a toxic fondue.
But eventually even on the BAD DAYS … the storm clouds clear and we put down our umbrella and we once again SEE each other and our SELF as perpetually perfect, always and unconditional.
And in my book, that’s a good day.
