could it be the trauma?

could it be the trauma? this nagging feeling, this sense of being off that i can’t quite put my finger on. the reason i took a nap in the middle of the day, which i rarely do. the reason i still felt exhausted upon awakening.

could it be the trauma? could it be because i shared my sexual trauma story with a partner yesterday? it was hard, yes, but it didn’t feel particularly triggering or anything close to re-traumatizing.

but then again, the body works in mysterious ways. and my nervous often leans towards a hypoarousal state.maybe it’s some sort of residual effect, delayed and intangible.

i often note feeling tired for no seemingly logical reason, and the most reasonable conclusion i often come to is long-lasting depression, something that seems to have been with me for most of my life.

i’m not exactly sure when i started noticing this, this lack of energy without a cause. but i can remember making note of it when i was sober — i remember the frustration and confusion at doing everything right and still not having consistent energy levels.

i’ve been noting it again for some months now, reminiscent of last summer, when i hit a depression peak that i couldn’t seem to kick. but i feel less clearly depressed now as i did then.

it’s the not knowing that fucks with me, the inability to identify cause. or to even put clearly into words my present experience. there’s also a point where trying to figure out the why becomes counterproductive, starts to take away from my ability to treat the symptoms. but of course, not knowing the why behind puzzling symptoms is scary, ominous. and something as vague as inexplicable fatigue could be a product of just about any and everything from a mood disorder to a vitamin deficiency to cancer.

i can stomach the practice of sitting with hard emotions (within reason). i can accept if what i’m being called to do is simply accept. but it’s hard in the moment to have clarity around when to allow things as they are and when to take action, when to try to change how i feel and when to just be with it. when to seek help, to feel concerned, and when to make note but not get too worked up over it.

being human is a fragile experience. there’s so much at play, i don’t really understand how anyone’s able to pinpoint any one particular cause for any specific circumstance. the desire to do so feels more to me like grasping, at knowledge, at understanding, with the hope that in finding the answer, we can achieve some sort of control.

there’s pain inside me that at times i glimpse, get a taste of, and yet i have this intuitive perception that it’s only the tip of the iceberg, a mere sampling of something deep down inside me — some affliction long buried and built upon over and over again. so that the depth of the roots, how far it reaches down, is unknown even to me.

it reminds me of my ayahuasca experience and the profundity of emotional suffering i was confronted with, and to some extent, was able to purge myself of. and yet there was still so much left… the best words i could find to capture this sense was as a “pain sponge” — i could feel that some of the pain was my own, but much of it was others’, people i’ve encountered during my time on this earth whose agony i’ve absorbed like a sponge, along with torment i’ve inherited, passed down to me in my blood and bones.

alright y’all, i’m going to cut it off there. i hope there’s something meaningful in all that for you to parse out. and if not, thanks for sticking with me anyway. ❤