Muscle Memory

I cannot seem to recall the exact moment all was lost, which is, I believe, the utmost irony. It might have been as I walked down Amores street, laying eyes on the building in which such contaminated loving took place, that my mind might have decided to simply suppress the feeling of sheets so foreign and uncoordinated bodies. It could have been when I passed that dented car we used to park behind so we could love each other in shadow, but more so, when I noticed it gone from its eternal spot, neatly in symphony with our parting. There are so many memories that the mind does not seem able to handle through life, and most importantly, it tricks us into believing it truly tries. 

The morning I got the message of eternal absence, my mind seemed to say: “this is it. We can no longer move forward.” And yet, we did. Defiled innocence haunted me, even after crossing sea upon sea. My mind did not work for weeks; my sleep was a utopia that I could not match with reality. “We will no longer live.” And yet, we did. But horrors pile up, and as every organ in the body does, minds tend to go out of work. Bodies are frail things, even in their masked strength. Still, they hold a single priority in the highest regard, and that is the same with every living thing: to protect us from harm. Homeostasis will match your body temperature to your environment’s survival needs. Still, sometimes the outside will be too cold, and you will shut down and feel nothing but the agonizing burn that can only accompany ice, and then nothing. Because your body understands that, at times, the feeling is worse than enduring what is happening. I suppose our brain is no different.

       I read Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking not too long ago, or so I think. Days blend upon days, shadows overlap, and I cannot recall precisely when I did what, or if I did it at all. But I did write it down in a piece of paper, how she mentions her late husband saying “It all evens out in the end,” and how she did not mean she meant the tragedies in one’s life until he was gone, and she saw it clearly and wondered if it was true. I now wonder the very same. 

       One might be able to forget events, twist them up in our minds, so dialogues match people who, realistically, are utterly unattached from the intentions of such saying. But I have found that feelings are an opponent that is exponentially harder to fool. Emotions linger, and they leave traces that are so unclear at times, we tend to have a hard time following in their footsteps. And so I might not remember exactly what led me to such a disgusting feeling of self-pity, but I remember feeling like the world was against me, that months drew too close with their tragedies and that it could be nothing but a personal vendetta. That I looked around to people with matters that now, to me, seemed trivial. An unrequited love, mild stress from work, a fight with a friend that would surely come to be in order again. And I remember feeling stripped from such innocence that I did not believe I would be able to truly devote myself with suffering to these matters anew. I remember feeling envious of the suffering I once thought so tremendous and now seemed so small. But maybe John Dunne was right, and it all does even out in the end. 

Maybe it’s horrible I wrote it down because that means it brought me relief, once. To think of others suffering as I did, to feel my pain would one day be universal, that I would no longer stand alone in agony, but accompanied by others who knew it just as intimately as I did. I guess it is pointless to dwell on the morality of my actions now or on if he was right or not. I no longer have a starting point from which to exercise my comparison, this twisted game of karma I seemed to be playing. I am not to know if everyone will ever know what I went through as intimately, or if they will know worse or better. Others have certainly felt worse and came out victorious. But perhaps my body was frailer than most, as it seems to have been too much. The tundra led to such freezing that I held no more resilience in my reserves; homeostasis had reached its last resort.

       And so, I believe, my brain shut down. It shoved grief for others in a specific cabinet and grief for who I used to be in another. It pushed bitterness in the highest shelf and left me alone to figure out how something so horrid came to be. And I sit in a room with all these labels of what I feel, all these longings that no longer seem mine, and I hesitate on whether I want to know how they came to be. Do I want to know why I feel a fear resembling panic whenever I am alone in a room with a man? Do I wish to understand why certain places seem to cross my heart like a dagger would? Or would I rather walk by streets that seem foreign to my mind, but which my heart is so reactive to? Do I wish to match sense with spirit, or trust my brain did the pertinent thing depriving me of such knowledge?

       Perhaps the body is the first parent we ever come to know. Our intuition is a mother that will not permit us to go somewhere, while an injury a scolding for not listening. And parents know what is best for their children, after all. And I guess if the wiser thing to do is forget, I shall not be stubborn. I must never again remember.