Recovery feels like those mornings where you have to wake up earlier than you wanted to.  It feels like that first moment when your head leaves the pillow and you're dragging your body upward. Your feet hit the floor, and it's a stinging cold sensation. Yet somehow, it's soothing.Â
Recovery feels like when you turn the lights on after sitting in a dark room for too long. The lights are piercing and revealing. You imagine them burning your skin, but you keep moving anyway.Â
Recovery feels like those seconds after a long run where you're out of breath and your muscles are screaming, but you feel alive all at the same time. There is a numbness in your legs and chills going down your arms, following the trails of your sweat.Â
Recovery feels like a constant dream. As the days pass, you start to have more and more fleeting moments of happiness. You have to ask yourself if they were real. You have to remind yourself that you are in fact awake.Â
Recovery feels like a bath that's too hot. You wonder if the water could actually scald you yet it's so relaxing.Â
And at the end, when you think you are fully recovered, there are days where you feel like a can of paint. You're bright and new and fresh but you are still cold.Â
Recovery feels like you have a choice again. There are now options that weren't there before. You don't have to lay in bed all day. You don't have to be happy or sad. Some days, you can choose to feel the pain without sinking into a hole that's too deep to climb out of. Some days you can fight the flashbacks or you can experience them and learn from them. And some days, there is nothing wrong at all. Recovery is learning to remember those days, to cling to them, so that when the shadows come you have a weapon.
