The Silent, Observant
October 30th, 2023
“You are speaking in other people’s memories.”
I’ve serial cycled through therapists like we all have if we really tried. One woman’s voice is the solve for only one of my problems – Oh, and she takes my insurance. I broke my genetic taboo of therapy back in high school for reasons I smile at today with a hands-up surrender laugh.
This past year, new problems came and went how the seasons do. Every year we beg for autumn, but when she arrives we see her colors as winter’s frigid prelude. Every year we roll heavy purple eyes at the snow we romanticize in July. Spring is rain in the face, not an annual wash of pain. It’s all shifty. It’s all the same. This past year, I had new problems so I searched for a new therapist.
Eli.
She was cool. Really cool. She had a sprawling eagle tattoo across her bicep, and always nodded her head. Even when I was comically wrong.
Up down up down.
She only had a wilted limp houseplant and a dresser in her space behind the computer screen. Her room reminded me of what I thought a safe-house might look like. Was she being held hostage? Was she hiding? Was she being forced to be my therapist in this tiny room somewhere? Why was I in therapy? Oh, right.
During one of our hour-long bi-weekly sessions, she asked me to recount some of my earliest memories. I ignored the chilly nip of anxiety at the base of my neck in response to her instructions and sat up a little straighter in my seat. Earliest memories. The memories you can’t tell if they actually happened or if your stories are just re-written blueprint.
So I told her. I told her about my first splinter, getting stitches on my nose, my third birthday cake (it was an alligator - it was sick), and that time a worm busted out of my blueberry. My defaults. She encouraged me to go deeper. So I dove.
My attempted memory felt like a colorless wading pool. I was waist-deep in black matter. Past me was nowhere to be found in the archives of my mind. I told her stories about my brothers’ football games and their Halloween costumes. I told her about my mom’s friends, and my dad’s over-arching quietness. I told her all the ridiculous stories that circulated in my middle schools. I told her about my family and our falling leaves. Not once did I just mention me.
Eli interrupted me, “You are speaking in other people’s memories. Tell me what you remember and how you felt about it.” Of course, my immediate response to her call-out was to spout tears. I was an observer. I noticed how other people felt before I felt.
Today, I feel. I feel everything. I’m not entirely sure when that switch flipped, but I’m glad the light came on. Sometimes I feel too much, but that’s okay. Backtracking in time feels like regression sometimes, and that’s okay. Today I am busy walking through my memories to tell the silent, observant versions of myself to feel it all before there’s nothing to feel anymore.
Today, I remember. I remember what it was like to be five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, yesterday-days-old and counting. Static lemon-blonde haired. Rolly-pollies in Michigan. Thursday pizza-nights. Trampoline talks. Hot-tub snow dives. Volleyball brush burns and violent teenage girl victory. Boy band craze and ice cream tubs. Abandonment and Christmas wrapping paper cuts. Crushes and after-school runs. My room upstairs with the purple walls that I picked and painted.
Every detail matters, and it matters that they are mine. My memories.
Drink the colors, palm the rage, hold the heartbreak, praise the love. Today we feel, today remember.
