The Proximity of Memory
As a person with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I’ve learned over time how to zero in on the clues that tell me things are about to be Bad, though I’m usually not sure what version of Bad I’ll be getting. Part of it is the raging river of my intuition and part of it is the third-eye awareness my therapy studies taught me how to tap into. Being hyper-perceptive can be an absolute nightmare, for sure; the waterfalls of feelings seem to drown me every now and then, though recently I’ve felt my grip on managing my mind and heart to be solid. I didn’t cry, not fully anyway, for three months. Until, well, last night.
The wave began on Sunday brunch when my friends were vibing with the jazz band and I was clenching my teeth, suddenly quiet, swallowing my tongue. All jazz music does is remind me of weekend breakfasts when my father was yelling about biscuits or some other pointless shit and his screaming was punctuated by the smooth jazz he insisted on playing in the background. It’s comically violent to think about it now. Aside from that, I’d spent the weekend lazing about on the beach, hopped up on a high dose of antibiotics because my body never lets me enjoy normal things, like existing on an airplane or going out more than once a week without punishing me for it. I kept Googling the dosage because I certainly didn’t believe I needed to be taking four pills a day at my height and weight, and my body was all weird-feeling, hot with goosebumps. The beach offered me equilibrium, the ocean water too cold but necessarily so, the sand warming my bare, bronze skin.
The ickiness continued into Monday when several of my students showed up sick, my office a petri dish of Coachella germs (of course they had gone). I warned them I was going to take Wednesday off and they groaned but accepted it—I was on the verge of burning out due to others’ constant need of me, but another side effect of childhood abuse and adoption trauma is a weak-ass immune system (yay!). My body was already fighting something else; it did not need a counterpart. As Monday rolled into Tuesday, it was hard for me to discern what was happening to me physically. Is this the antibiotics? Did I catch the sickness? Am I fully burnt?
I tried to talk to my mom about it on the way to work, on a call she manages to make only once or twice a month, but conversations with her are topical at best. If I attempt to go deep, my throat catches and stops the words in their tracks because I know her answer will not meet my needs. Over the course of learning about a new roof on the Florida house I will never set foot in again and her plans for returning to Connecticut, I asked if she would fly from Boston to Southern California with my sister and nephew this summer. My sister is understandably nervous to fly solo with an almost four-year-old, and my long-retired mother has nothing but time—and I so badly want to carry my sweet, giggling nephew into the waves with me in this place I love so much.
That’s not something I’ll consider, she said. Not. Something. She’ll. Consider.
It took her approximately 0.5 seconds to say that.
I ended the call as I pulled into work. I was not surprised. But just because you’re not surprised by something doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like fucking hell.
“Oh, Miss Leavy, are you okay?” one of my sweet girls asked when she walked into my office moments after I arrived.
“I’m okay! I’m just not wearing any makeup today,” I half-laughed. She laughed. We dropped it. But I had put makeup on—I’d just rubbed it mostly off in the parking lot sitting with my face in my hands trying to forget what my mom had said.
On Wednesday I slept in, drank my tea and walked my dog, and convinced myself that I didn’t need to try to do anything with the day. I had taken it off for the express purpose of rest. I flowed in and out of sleep on the couch, my body reveling in the long shake-out of survival mode—but even after a jog on the beach trail, I was unsettled, buzzing. I was supposed to see someone but didn’t (and trust that I’ve figured out the psychology behind this situation already; us with our two beautiful and frustrating identical hearts and brains working out different in-betweens while leaning towards each other, so there’s a softness between us I can’t quite name) and so even though I was certainly disappointed, I’d half-expected it and had no reaction at all. I never feel badly towards him—it was what it was, we are what we are. I just did my laundry instead.
But then the text came.
“Did you know your Long Term Ex is here?”
The buzzing became an earthquake.
LTE is here, in my city, thousands of miles away from where we lived together, staying with mutual friends in a house 400 feet from mine. That’s walkable in about a minute.
My eyes were not prepared for the torrential downpour that emerged from them. Like I said—it had been three months since I cried, the backlog bursting through the dam with the power of a thousand turbines. It only lasted a few minutes, the rush of the news leaving as fast as it had come. When I could catch my breath, I wondered what I had even cried about; it wasn’t LTE himself—I have long been over him. He’s almost unreal to me now.
It’s the proximity of the memory. It’s what his closeness brings up for me, the torrid idea returning to my brain: You are unwanted. You will never be chosen.
The jazz band had started the rumble. The feeling bad in my body had perpetuated it. My mom, not even considering seeing me, pushed it forward. Being alone when I got the news made me feel so untethered that the image of LTE just around the corner sent me spiraling into the darkness. This is the reality of trauma, of heartbreak: no matter how long ago it happened, sometimes a storm hits and all you can do is brace yourself for impact.
I needed to cry that way, from the depths of my body, to push out what the proximity of memory had resurfaced. I spit out the notion that I am unwanted, disgusted by the thought alone as I spoke to myself as softly as I could. Look where you are, April. Look at all of the love you still have to give.
I mostly slept through the night (save for one line in a poem I had to wake up to write into my Notes app), and woke easily, something I almost never do. My pets snuggled in for a few minutes; I got ready for work. I left on time.
As I slowed to a stop at the intersection, I looked to my left, the house LTE is visiting fully visible on the corner. I thought I saw his figure there, standing on the sidewalk, his form no more real to me than if he didn’t exist at all. I felt nothing, turned my head forward, and drove on to continue living the life I’ve always wanted.
A song I listen to frequently which always gives me perspective is this one by JP Saxe. There’s a line in it where he sings, shaking off the habits of a different love, which reminds me how we can always build something new while recognizing each of us brings a past to a relationship we have to unwind. I know I'm always going to need to shake off the habits of a different love (the one I shared with LTE), but being soft and patient with a new person while you figure it out together—knowing they need to shake off their own habits, too—can actually be magical.