Did you ever wake up from a dream you thought wasn't a dream and the first thing you felt soon as you open your eyes was a stabbing pain in your chest, like your lungs were constricted and you're almost out of air?
Some nights, without any conclusive reason, I would wake up halfway through a certain dream and feel disoriented. It happened again this morning. Problem is I couldn't remember what the dream's about. I tried recovering scenes, piecing together any slice of picture I could call to mind to form one uninterrupted context. No luck there. There was no way my mind would allow me a glimpse of even one frame from this dream-slash-could-be-nightmare. Not even a color, a glimpse of a building, not even a tree. I only remember staring over my shoulder, as if I was a spectator to my own self, playing out a character as the story unravels. Unfortunately, I didn't get to remember the story at all.
All I know is that there was some unnamed aching in my chest.
A few nights ago, the thing I dreaded each October secretly crept at my life again. In the last five years, there were these instances where I feel a phantom weight pressing down on my chest. It thrusts me into stuporous states as if I were drunk. I linked it to anxiety and hormonal imbalance. It was the most rational explanation at the time. It wasn't relapse for sure. Defensive-sounding or not, I thought I'd let you know I've allowed myself an emotional slough of time to heal and lick my wounded feelings back to better health.
This phantom feeling is a dull ache that slowly assaults the mind. Sorry but I find it very difficult to explain. You could say that it's something depressing, a heaviness whose roots I couldn't trace back to its origin, not even after so many years of contemplation.
I'm guessing that it has got something to do with a painful past I tried to recover from, but it wasn't just that. Part of me is saying that it could be a mixture of all the suppressed feelings I carefully locked in what I call "drawers and closets" in my head, and a darned cue will tell them to trickle down and seize what little control I have of my emotions.
What's weird is the fact that I couldn't associate October with anything hurtful. My memory does not offer me any clue as to why this strange emotion washes over me every single time for over four or five years now.
Just to set things straight, I am convinced that the process of recuperation had been long overdue and I've given myself a break from all the torments I inflicted to myself. I've come to terms with myself and the past. Which brings me back to the question: Where the hell are these dull aches coming from?
You see, it's somehow difficult for me to express myself in spoken words, so I keep these pent-up emotions inside me without ever saying them out loud. Resorting to writing furiously, walking non-stop until I get lost, jogging until my lungs burst oceans of exhaustion, I use any type of temporary escape to make me feel better even for a short while.
I locked words due a situation and come up only with a few lines and shut everything down. I clam up when I'm hurt and just withdraw from everything for a period of time. The suppression of desperate anger most probably did it. I didn't want to blame anybody, no matter how much I feel like there's got to be somebody to take the blame. So I bludgeoned myself with "it's my fault" and accused myself of things I now realized a few years after that I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have been hard on myself, I thought. If it was anyone's fault, it needs to settle to the bottom that no one has the right to excavate, not even myself.
You see, I didn't want to put anyone and my own self into such a wringer.
So I ask myself, "How much longer will I endure these phantom aches?"
I guess the answer lies in the acceptance that some things fade away in an instant, and some things cling to us like parasites. Sucking out all that they can take, until they leave us dry. Alone an unable to recuperate from life-damaging experiences.
This phantom feeling is a dull ache that slowly assaults the mind. Sorry but I find it very difficult to explain. You could say that it's something depressing, a heaviness whose roots I couldn't trace back to its origin, not even after so many years of contemplation.
I'm guessing that it has got something to do with a painful past I tried to recover from, but it wasn't just that. Part of me is saying that it could be a mixture of all the suppressed feelings I carefully locked in what I call "drawers and closets" in my head, and a darned cue will tell them to trickle down and seize what little control I have of my emotions.
What's weird is the fact that I couldn't associate October with anything hurtful. My memory does not offer me any clue as to why this strange emotion washes over me every single time for over four or five years now.
Just to set things straight, I am convinced that the process of recuperation had been long overdue and I've given myself a break from all the torments I inflicted to myself. I've come to terms with myself and the past. Which brings me back to the question: Where the hell are these dull aches coming from?
You see, it's somehow difficult for me to express myself in spoken words, so I keep these pent-up emotions inside me without ever saying them out loud. Resorting to writing furiously, walking non-stop until I get lost, jogging until my lungs burst oceans of exhaustion, I use any type of temporary escape to make me feel better even for a short while.
I locked words due a situation and come up only with a few lines and shut everything down. I clam up when I'm hurt and just withdraw from everything for a period of time. The suppression of desperate anger most probably did it. I didn't want to blame anybody, no matter how much I feel like there's got to be somebody to take the blame. So I bludgeoned myself with "it's my fault" and accused myself of things I now realized a few years after that I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have been hard on myself, I thought. If it was anyone's fault, it needs to settle to the bottom that no one has the right to excavate, not even myself.
You see, I didn't want to put anyone and my own self into such a wringer.
So I ask myself, "How much longer will I endure these phantom aches?"
I guess the answer lies in the acceptance that some things fade away in an instant, and some things cling to us like parasites. Sucking out all that they can take, until they leave us dry. Alone an unable to recuperate from life-damaging experiences.
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