If this is your first time stumbling into the blog- Welcome!
I’m Cayla, the Founder of The Move to Heal Project- and it is no secret I love to write. I often turn to writing when I have emotions whirling around inside me that I can’t seem to name. Once I attached those emotions to story, I am often able to get a little more clarity.
I am sharing this free write with you. Its mostly a nod to how I felt in my early 20s when I was experiencing a tremendous amount of trauma but did not have words or a full narrative to describe what was happening. I internalized a lot and it began to affect me medically and increase my need for control.
I would encourage you to try your own free write today- for 30 minutes- and see what it produces.
Just put your pen to paper and WRITE!
Tag us: @MoveToHealProject+ @CaylaMeredith
Scroll down for my story
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Every morning in quarantine I awake to the sounds of streetcars honking, construction workers yelling, fresh air littered with nostalgia and stagnant energy as if the entire world is waking up along with me, moving to the kitchen for a hot cup of coffee.
Today is no different and as the coffee brews, the aroma pulls me back to memory.
San Diego, 2003.
I recall a small hotel room with sliding glass doors that open to the sound of big waves crashing- a sound my Mother often tells me, she is soothed by. When we were little she used to take her beach chair and place it directly in the water so she could feel the waves wash over her feet, then out, wash over her feet, then out. The ocean is rhythmic and certain in these moments, like a beating heart, and I think that’s why she likes it- it feels safe.
We fly in the night before but today she doesn’t notice the jet lag and leans over, whispering excitedly to tell me she is going for a walk along the beach with her hot coffee. For a split second I grasp at the simplistic nature of this statement and long for a moment where I am not focused on feeling sick and tired but, like a tidal wave, that longing leaves me and I drift back into deep exhaustion.
From here, things get spotty. There are entire days that I don’t remember.
Is that how memory works? Or is that a coping mechanism?
I’m not sure.
There are days I don’t remember but the vivid, constant, protagonist in this San Diego story is how little I eat. I’m whispy and absorb nothing and when we drive, I often recline my seat because I’m too tired to sit up.
One day we cross the bridge in the afternoon sun to Tijuana and share chips and guac and a margarita on a patio. By ‘share’ I mean that I eat one chip, maybe two.
“Whatever you do, don’t touch any ice” someone warns us, and so the margarita is delicious but lukewarm and the thick salt slips quickly down the glass and into the drink where it floats like a carefree child in the ocean.
We leave lunch and wander into a tequila shop, and all the bottles have worms and I’m equal parts grossed out and intrigued.
The bottles are lined up like those bottle toss games at the fair and as the Mexican radio mingles into the reverberation of Mom laughing I think about an earthquake and how quickly everything would shatter. I think about the loss of profit for this kind Mexican man and then I wonder about his own family and what he did this morning, wonder if he too drank coffee or a watery margarita. I also wonder what it would be like to die completely submerged in tequila, like the worms, and I imagine it can’t be half bad.
We get caught in traffic on a crowded bus on the bridge back over to San Diego. The cars aren’t idling anymore- they’re turned off- but the exhaust lingers, and paired with the humidity it’s a thick wool scarf around my mouth. There are people walking in and out of the lines of traffic selling blankets, water and food. The bus is soft shades of brown and yellow and it’s exactly like those movie scenes when a light is flickering in a seedy room and someone gets questioned. The sunset, however, is a contrast of stretched canvas: purple and pink and a little orange, as if God or Universe keeps going back with their paintbrush, carefully musing,
“I’m not done yet”.
The bus is so dirty but the sky is so vibrant and we are strangers taking it in together and it’s moments of humanity exactly like this that I’m always searching for. I engage in conversation with a man who is a body builder and out of all the things he says, he tells me how much he loves his fiance, and it feels so pure and real and innocent, like a soft breeze before a tsunami.
Now-I don’t know when the sickness completely sets in- on the bus or after- but the feeling begins in the center of my body and intensifies as the hours pass and all of a sudden I black out and I am not on the bus anymore, I am back in our hotel room. This new hotel room door opens right out to where the pool is. It’s surrounded by tall palm trees and looks exactly like a California postcard that says WISH YOU WERE HERE.
My Mom is controlled and calm- or may be pretending- and she leaves me alone in the hotel room with the lamp on next to my bed, insistent on getting food because I haven’t ingested anything since the chip, and since the chip- I’m not sure. It’s been a few days, probably. Eating food feels dangerous, like handling harsh chemicals with no face mask or gloves, like swallowing even a tiny amount will wound me.
Mom is gone for what feels like hours, and as she is gone I begin to land in my body for the first time in a long time, and over the course of the next few moments I am introduced to a new sensation: Panic.
My friend in highschool had this overweight cat named Mog and the cat would scratch her so much she didn’t even notice the scratches anymore, and this is exactly how I would describe my relationship with Fear. Panic is new though- we don’t have a relationship yet- and it decides to introduce itself to me here like an intrusive, arrogant guest at a social gathering- hastily and without consideration.
The panic tag-teams the pain and both feel sharp and excruciating and extend into every crevice of my body like heat from a glowing radiator. The pain comes in pulses, then leaves, in pulses, then leaves like the waves washing over Moms feet and every time it recedes I feverishly plead to God to never feel it again.
It’s a cycle of disappointment that my brain will become accustomed to not just for a few hours, but for the next several years of my life.
How did I get here?
Into this much pain, I mean.
Everything I feel in my spirit is beginning to manifest in my body. I feel exposed because my secrets are starting to surface and I’m disappointed in the way my own body can’t keep my demons hidden. Shame is my cloak and it keeps me warm at night the more weight I lose.
I stare up at the stucco ceiling and feel like a feather tucked away under blankets and sheets.
Mom went to get yogurt but what I actually need is brand new skin, a new cloak, kind secrets, a new life.
I think about the way housekeepers tuck the sheets in hotels and remember how my Mom eagerly explains to me that she learned how to tuck sheets like this in nursing school and whenever I return home my dreams feel safe and protected by this fabric fortress she creates.
I stare up at the stucco ceiling and wonder if I’ll die here, alone, panicked, but safely tucked with the California palm trees in view.
WISH YOU WERE HERE.
It feels like a mockery now.
I am a feather tucked away under blankets and sheets and the next pain pulse, like shock paddles, springs me out of bed to my knees. I crawl into the washroom and everything feels like a sharp tilt at sea. I grab onto the silver handicap bar and hold it for balance and think about that earthquake again, and if it were to happen right now I would truly be fucked.
I wonder if I’ll die here.
I’m too numb to have feelings around this statement but woke enough to realize the severity of what is happening. But my evening drink is denial on the rocks and today it tastes better than tequila, it’s the only thing I swallow now.
So here in San Diego, all I can do is wait; in this sliver of lamp light shining into the shadows of the washroom, away from the sheet tucks and waves and palm trees and Mexico and Mom.
All I can do is Wait.