Weighted Blanket
(a poem, I suppose)
I dredge up the ruins of my own past and sift through its remains quite often nowadays. Where once I feared drowning in those emotional waters, now I swim through them as if I were born and raised in them. In a way, I suppose I was.
Still, there’s much that remains buried at the bottom of that lake. Pulling up old feelings, old memories, old trauma is painful. Deep pain permeates my body; deep sorrow sinks into my heart. And yet, I swim onward; rather than deflecting my discoveries to protect myself from their pain, I draw it into myself and accept it all as part of who I’ve become.
I wonder sometimes if this is really the healthiest way to live. That by taking in such heavy emotions I’m anchoring myself to this dark lake. But these heavy feelings are mine, and there’s a familiarity to them that feels right. My tears, my emptiness, my yearning; all of them weave together into a heavy tapestry, an existential weighted blanket. I crawl beneath it and feel safe as a familiar ache presses down on me, secure in the knowledge that I am here.