My mind is in overdrive as I have tossed and turned away the last few nights. You see the recent murder of a woman and her children has really rattled me. I know sadly this occurs every nine days in this country but this particular event has really sat deep within my stomach. The weight of pain gnaws away and I feel this tightness and an overwhelming ache , a feeling of unsettling is sitting around me. Try as I may I can not shake it and so I toss and turn and all these thoughts and visions come into my head.Words and language around the event are also triggering a guttural response , again I oscillate between rage, fear and confusion.
Having spent the last few years writing my memoir there were times when I put it away , destroyed thousands of words and thought the past is the past, just move on. All those self doubts and fear that were heightened by memory of creating the story at times would swallow me and hiding away and closing the book seemed the best option. So in a perverse kind of irony just as I am close to the end I seem to be seeing some pages from my story evolve in real life and it is rattling me as the what ifs start to raise their head.
Maybe it is just the dark of night talking, maybe it is self sabotage, maybe I am just emotionally drained, or maybe I am not as ready as I think. But then I think maybe someone will read it and believe that there is hope and a way forward, however I also know some are not as lucky as me.
How does one move past a physiological response to such trauma ?
I need to appreciate living and life and shake this awful feeling from within my gut. My go to method is to retreat from the world. I am heading off with those I love for a weekend away, no phones, no news, just shutting the outside world away.I need to reframe my thinking as I walk along bush paths, listen to nature, laugh and sing and eat and drink. I need to find brave .
I seek serenity and just the nothingness of nature. If I stare long enough I hope I will find the answer.Sometimes we have to disconnect from the cruelty of this world to just be.
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