I hate how uncomfortable my chest feels—like tambourines crashing, like rubber bands stretched and snapped in my underbelly. I pretend to grab handfuls of it and hurl it into the yard, across the country road, into the cow-filled pasture. Eff you, I want to say. Be rid of me.
It feels like an infestation. A possession. Something that, if I had a say in the matter, I’d ship to the other side of the world. But I don’t get a say. It’s a game of chance. Other people’s complicated spiderwebs of insecurity and bullshit build like ash on an unflicked cigarette. Until I want to Hulk-smash this unease into the ground.
Reading In Cold Blood in every spare second has dropped me into a nightmarish playground. I’m mouth-agape, frozen in awe of Capote’s genius, and disturbed by his obsession. He was “in”—writing letters with the killers, interviewing them, winning the townspeople’s trust (with Harper Lee’s help, no less). And I wonder about the cost of witnessing, of letting something that dark live in you so long it becomes a part of the architecture.
Back to this feeling in my chest—it’s eased a bit. My deep breaths break it up like climate change splintering glaciers. Still, I feel like a teenager being yanked by the ear—“Listen here, young lady!”—as someone else snuffs out my need. Or maybe it’s their need, or someone else’s. I don’t even know. I feel confused. Triggered.
Why do people hate that word so much? Triggered. I think it aptly describes the sensation: like a finger pulling back a lever, like the rippling wave of a threat that’s already on its way.
I feel helpless to my emotions. A side act to their main feature. Like I’m gagged backstage while they take center stage. And that’s not fair. I’m the expert. I’m capable. I’m the one who punches their hand back and forth at the front of the marching band.
But right now, those emotions have capsized me. I become a head-nodding dummy version of myself—a window-store mannequin in last season’s fashion, stuck and removed. Where’s the surgeon who can cut this out of me—the too-muchness that binds and gags and haunts?
But I’m okay. The storm, like all storms, passes. The sky returns—light lavender—and it blinks at me once, as if to say: You’re safe now. I am not those horrible thoughts. I am not the worry. I do have a voice.
Some emotions are still too big for me. So big they sometimes swallow me whole.
But I keep picking up my surfboard.
Writing saves me. Next up: physical exertion. After that, I read. I read obsessively. Because halfway through an extraordinary book waits for no one.
Not even me.
Love,
Jaclynn
Going On 40 