TW: Relationship Violence

I have sat on this piece for a while, unsure of how I want to tell it. But what I’ve learned from the last few weeks is that even when stories are hard to tell, and even when it feels like words and analogies cannot capture the nuance or maybe even the truth of an experience, there is much more to be gained by leaning on what we share, not what separates us. I do not need to be understood perfectly to be loved.

The stories I tell here are separated by a few years and much more besides that but intersect in ways that helped me navigate a difficult time in my life. They are a brief reflection on numbness, burning, and recovering a body.

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I am 17 and I put my foot through snow, ice, then water beneath them. It is still snowing enough that the sound of creaking trees around me is muted. I feel a sick numbness fall beneath the ice into my right leg. 

I am only a few days removed from the relationship that took up the last year and a half of my life. Already I can feel the burning pain that’s welling up in me, but I refuse to think about its source, I am not ready for that. It is easier to sit and think nothing for a while, to pull numbness like a hood over the back of my head until it covers everything important. I sit like this through July – comfortably, intentionally numb.

I drag the unfeeling lower-right side of my body out of the shallow river. There is a gentle wind blowing on ¾ of my body; it is coming from the direction I will walk to get home. My pant leg is already caked with ice, and I hit it, hard, to see if I feel anything (nothing). A spectacular part of me thinks about how this is a potentially deadly situation, and I indulge in the thought. I don’t want to call for help and worrying about freezing to death will keep me quick for the mile and a half I have to walk to get back home.

It is August, and in the peaking summer heat, I choose to no longer sit in numbness. I go to what comes after numbness, the way blood burns around the body after you come in from the cold, choosing to stop being cold. I think about the things she said to me, the things she did to me. I am burning. 

I have tripped or fallen too many times to count, and my hands and forearms are burning from the tree bark and brush I catch myself on. I am not quite dragging the frozen parts of my body, but they move clumsily. I hear the ice crack on my pant leg as I pull myself up off another root. 

There are worse things to think about, and I will think about them in time, but for now I focus on her fist. A fist is material and simple, a small collection of curled fingers on which I can focus the hurt that is eating up my whole body. Even a weak punch to the shoulder can make your whole arm numb.

I am out of the woods, still half a mile from home but there are no longer roots to snag my slower leg. The wind is blowing stronger out here without trees for it to break upon.

My friend leans over and kisses me. She is the first person to hear me describe what happened as abuse. Her intentions are good, but we both reek of tequila. I sit outside and watch the stars come out. It’s September, and I don’t know where my favorite constellations are. Maybe they aren’t out this early in the year; I don’t normally start stargazing until December. The cold makes the stars brighter. My friend joins me and leans her head on my shoulder. Her hair brushes away the last bits of numbness that her lips left on my neck.

I am paused on the front porch of my house. A day ago I shoveled the snow out of the driveway with my dad, and I think about the way my fingers ached after putting down the icy shovel and holding them over the space heater. I imagine my leg will feel much worse but the pause has gone on long enough. In a different world, I let my whole body slide below the ice into the river, content to let the water blanket me until the thaw of mid-March. In this world, I recover my body.

October, and I have grown used to a cycle of numbness and burning. When someone tells you they love you and they hate you with the same lips, when they hold you and hit you with the same hands, you cannot expect yourself to understand how deep the hurt goes after just a few months. Still, it’s hard not to be tired of the cycle. I want to give up, whatever the fuck that means.

I think back to a few years ago: a frozen river, a clumsy leg, and miles of walking through snowy woods. This reassures me and I don’t know why. The parallels aren’t clear yet, but they don’t need to be. I know what is important.

I know how to recover a body.