The Body Keeps the Score Even When the Mind Doesn’t
990 Words
The memories don’t come back all at once.
They trickle.
At first, it’s a harmless thing, sounds, textures, the way certain rooms make my skin crawl for no obvious reason. I will be brushing my teeth and suddenly feel the urge to spit again, harder, like something bitter is still there. I will be halfway across the street when my legs lock up for a split second, panic flaring without a name.
My body remembers before I do.
That’s the cruel part.
I wake up the morning after the café feeling like I ran a marathon in my sleep. My muscles ache. My jaw is tight. My head feels heavy, like it’s been carrying secrets all night and didn’t get any rest.
For a moment, just a moment, I don’t know where I am.
The ceiling looks unfamiliar. Too white. Too clean.
Then my room comes into focus. My bed. My window. My phone was buzzing faintly on the nightstand.
I breathe out slowly.
You’re not here, I remind myself.
That thought doesn’t comfort me the way it should.
I sit up, heart racing, sheets twisted around my legs like they tried to keep me from leaving. There’s a dull pressure in my chest, not pain exactly, more like a warning. Like my body is standing at the edge of something and doesn’t trust me not to fall.
I swing my feet onto the floor.
Cold shoots up my spine.
The memory doesn’t announce itself. It never does. It slips in sideways, uninvited, like a smell that shouldn’t still exist.
A door.
A hand on the knob.
The sound of a lock turning.
I gasp, grabbing the edge of the bed.
“No,” I whisper, even though there’s no one to hear me.
The room stays the same. The door stays closed. I am safe.
I repeat it like a mantra until my pulse slows.
Safe doesn’t mean untouched, though. I’m starting to understand that now.
⸻
I don’t tell you about the nightmares.
Not because I don’t want to.
Because I don’t want to see that look on your face again, the one that says you’d trade places with me if you could, even knowing it would destroy you.
Instead, I go about my day pretending this is manageable.
I shower. I eat half a meal. I answer texts like nothing inside me has shifted permanently.
But the world feels louder. Sharper. People stand too close. Voices overlap and my head throbs like it’s trying to protect something fragile.
At the grocery store, someone brushes past me in the aisle.
Just a shoulder. Accidental. Normal.
My vision tunnels.
Suddenly I’m not there anymore. I’m somewhere smaller. Darker. My lungs forget how to work.
I abandon the cart and stumble outside, air crashing into me like I’ve been underwater too long. My hands shake so badly I have to sit on the curb, head between my knees, counting breaths like my life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
That’s when it hits me, harder than the memories themselves.
This isn’t just remembering.
This is fallout.
⸻
That night, I dream without permission.
I’m younger. I know it by the way the world looks too big, by the way my voice sounds wrong when I try to scream.
The door opens.
I wake up before the worst part, but my body doesn’t care about technicalities. I’m drenched in sweat, heart slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
I grab my phone.
It’s past midnight.
I stare at your name for a long time before pressing call.
You answer on the second ring.
“I knew you’d call,” you say quietly.
That almost makes me laugh. Almost.
“I can’t do this alone,” I admit.
There’s a pause. No hesitation. Restraint.
“I know,” you say.
I curl onto my side, phone pressed to my ear like it’s the only thing tethering me to now.
“Is this normal?” I ask. “The panic. The… losing time.”
“Yes,” you answer. “And no. It’s common. But that doesn’t make it easy.”
I swallow. “I feel like my body betrayed me.”
Your voice softens. “It didn’t betray you. It protected you when your mind couldn’t.”
That makes something crack open in my chest.
“What if it gets worse?” I whisper.
“It might,” you say honestly. “Before it gets better.”
I close my eyes, letting the truth of that settle.
“And you?” I ask. “How did you live with this knowing?”
A long exhale.
“Poorly,” you admit. “I drank. I stayed busy. I avoided places that reminded me of you. I told myself distance was the same as healing.”
“And was it?”
“No,” you say. “But it kept me alive.”
That silence between us is thick with things we never said when it mattered.
“You don’t have to do this like I did,” you add. “You get help. You get support. You don’t disappear.”
I hesitate. “Will you stay?”
Not forever. Not promises. Just now.
“Yes,” you say. “I will stay.”
I don’t thank you.
I just breathe.
⸻
The next day, I find the bruise.
It’s faint. Yellowed. Old.
On my arm.
I don’t remember how it got there.
That’s when the fear changes shape.
Because forgetting isn’t just about the past anymore.
It’s about what else my mind decided I couldn’t survive knowing.
I sit on the edge of my bed, staring at my skin like it might answer me.
“What else did you hide?” I murmur to myself.
My body doesn’t respond.
But something deep inside me shifts, like a door unlocking.
And I know, without knowing how, that this is only the beginning.
- Writer
