on slowly resurfacing repressed memories:
I pay very close attention to my mind now, my thoughts and the reactions in my body to small things, because I really am trying to understand myself, because I really find my mind interesting now. I feel like I'm...sort of that I have had the first inkling that I can catch a bug, right? Stay with me. I find out I can jar a firefly and my world sort of implodes. I can do that? Well, now I know. And maybe at first I jarred every bug I saw because I had to, because I can now, but now I've started to just look at the bugs instead. Maybe with a magnifying glass. Letting them roam about in their natural habitat, where the blades of grass are tall as trees and they're in the shade even when I'm in none. Well, now I'm less worried about trapping every bug, and more interested in seeing what they do, how they communicate, if I can figure any of it out just by looking long enough and learning the pattern. So when thoughts come up that give me pause, a lady bug momentarily rises to its hind legs, who wouldn't be curious?
Some thoughts that come up are harder to look at with even objective curiosity. I look, but not too closely, as now the lady bug has become overshadowed buy the hulking disgusting millipede a foot away. I don't even know if I could be interested in it, because I can't get past disgust enough to really look. Maybe its legs are really cool like the bug lovers say, but I'm going to have to take their word for it.
But in my periphery, I let myself notice which direction it's going in. I know it's there, and when I'm not looking right at it I can start to feel a little curious. I think if they didn't gross me out so much, I'd the think way the sun glints on their exoskeleton is really quite beautiful, and I would think about what brushstroke movement would describe it most concisely. I'm not quite at that point yet, but I'm curious about that curiosity.
And when I watch movies, or TV, or read stories, books, or fanfiction, or look at art that hovers in triggering territory, it's me having caught just one bug in my jar, thoughtfully chosen with holes poked in the top and sticks and leaves galore, plus, I'm just keeping it long enough to look at it, then I'll put it back outside, no harm no foul. So I'm sitting and watching my jar bug. I'm noticing the way I react, and this is usually in regards to two bodies of of work: the bodies of work where someone is put through the wringer, a la panic attack, rape, rape recovery, active self harming, blackmailing, flashbacks, all kinds of shit. And it's 90% of the time, a great comfort bc that's the sort of thing that comforts me. 10% of the time? Eh, whatever, that 10%, the following is also true, just less...tidy. Oh, right, and the other body of work would be: sex. Both of these prompt the same sort of introspection.......That sentence prompts the same introspection. That sentence says a lot. That sentence says too much, and I'm moving on now.
But I read and i notice when I react, and I remember which leads me to another remembering and more remembering, and then I'm back at the gates of repression and it's as I stand there before it that I wonder. And this usually is where my wondering ends up: was that just something unremarkable that I recollect bc it is both remembered and thematically related to what I can't remember? Or is it remembered because ... it matters?
I'm afraid of the thoughts that are simmering blow this level. This is the level before speaking, the active thinking level. There are things below that that are trying to surface but I'm not ready for them. I know that. I've known that. That's the whole point of all of this. But I can see them in blurred snatches of color, a bit like a huge sea creature who comes so close to the surface, that the surface of the water bulges and the sun catches on this new high point, and there's color flashing just below that, reds or greens or blues or oranges that move so fast that with a blink, they're gone. There are many beasts who're closer and closer to breaking that surface tension every day. And I want to see them, I need to, but I'm terrified of it.
Maybe that's why the stormchasers do it.
Can this moment be significant if I'm not acutely aware that it could change everything in a heartbeat?
