Slowing Down

When I begin to write a new piece, I find myself rushing to get my ideas down, to get the story in place, as if only getting the words on paper will stop the flurry of images in my head. Writing stories, as opposed to analytical writing, starts with these narrative images playing through my mind, flickering like an old movie. Capturing them and putting them into words on a page requires that I STOP my mind for a minute, choose one image carefully, then slowly, slowly play that narrative through, documenting the details, going back and adding more when the moment is replayed again in my head. Piece by piece like this, I end up with a story, a novel even.

It isn’t easy for me. It requires that I stay in my body for an unknown amount of time, letting my own body experience the setting and action of the story as it unfolds. I cannot stand back distantly and describe a scene or action. I have to inhabit the mind of one of my characters and experience what is happening, second by second. The darkness of the stories I am prone to write makes this very painful. After an hour of writing, ending with 2 or 3 pages of text, I am exhausted, physically and emotionally.

For someone with PTSD, being in my own body is difficult at the best of times, but being in my body and living someone’s fear or pain, their happiness or pleasure, is even more difficult. I want to race through whatever scene I am writing, get it over with so I can once again exit the world of feelings. Again, I have to slow myself down and ask myself, What am I (the character) feeling right now? What sensation in my body? What do I see? And then I tell the story to myself, to my keyboard, eventually, after much revision, to other people.

And so it is with life. Every day, to battle the numbness and dissociation of PTSD, I have to slow down and experience the moments I am in. I hear people flippantly say, “Be in the moment” and I think, Easy for you to say.  Not so easy for me to do. I go through life, flying or floating, rarely touching ground. I view my body and a thing of aches and pains, an incumbrance, a tool to get things done. I live in my head because living in my body seems dangerous and painful. But what a waste of life that is. So I force myself to pause and listen. Pause and look. Pause and feel. A kink in my neck. Sunshine snoring on the sofa. The sunlight reflecting off the metal of my neighbor’s air conditioner and into my eyes. I close my eyes and breathe deeply and ask myself, “What do you feel?” Content but sad. I am always a little sad, it seems. More relaxed than I’ve been in over 18 months. Almost peaceful. And this is a victory for today.