The spiders come

Sometimes on 31st night services, the pastor  asks the congregation to pick a word for the coming  year. It is typically something like prosperity, or wealth, or joy; and each person centers their prayers into the new year on their chosen word. I think last year, while my head and my lips formed the words abundance and growth, my heart pled peace.

I had never thought of myself as a stresser. One of my best friends’ major pet peeve about me was how chill I was about everything. I always described myself that way very proudly. I was hard to frazzle, and could remain unbothered through any circumstances. About a year ago when I lay in the couch of my empty apartment- immobile and unshowered  for the third day in a row, my heart beat calmed only by the DW Home chamomile lavender candles I kept burning, I wondered how I got there. My trigger was a four page paper I had due for a class I had actually done the reading for. In my head I knew I could do it, and I had done much harder work under more difficult circumstances. But, the thought of it caused my chest to constrict and vomit to choke my throat,  and so I lay there the whole week of November break just reminding myself to breathe.

Freeze frame two  years before that, I lay in my  boyfriend’s twinXL bed, tears soaking his sheets. When he came in to find me crying, he would hold me and ask me what was wrong. My answer was always, ‘I don’t know.’ There’s no real way to describe the depth of sadness I felt, and the spiders in my stomach every time I thought of going outside. And so I would lie there and cry and hope each shed tear  would lighten the weight on my chest.

We would have great nights together when I could laugh for hours, or roast him when we went to dinner with friends at Shake Shack; and I could smile through small talk while checking out books at my job at the school library. Sometimes the smile was a little lopsided because I had just had a conversation with my supervisor about how I couldn’t make my hours because I was too afraid to go outside. Sometimes I checked out  the books silently because my throat was dry from a moment of spontaneous crying. Some nights after we’d gone to some party or chill thing at a friend’s house, I would lie next to him trying not to move too much and wake him up when the sobs shook my body. It felt like there was a void inside that would expand outwards until it consumed me.

The spiders come during the day. They are like family that show up without calling first, and stay far too long. They know you intimately, they know where you go to hide. They know the things that bring you joy and the things that dig you out until the hole in your chest feels tangible. Until you wonder if other people can see it too. The spiders come at night, in the middle of your third glass of rose and the fifth time you tell that story of how your mom is the person you love the most in this world. But not even she can keep them out.

They have taught me that peace is not always silence, and sometimes it means the same thing as growth. I breathe better these days- sometimes without having to tell myself to. I am learning what it means for this body to be my home. How to embrace every emotion it feels without letting it  define me, how to exist when the essence of my humanity is that I am a constant state of flux. Where does the core lie. The spiders cause me pain to the point of numbness, but I also know ecstacy. If my prayer was answered, and my heart got its desire I think it lies in that- I am not the things I feel and my center lies with a power much greater than I, eternally more steadfast than I. This year, my heart and my mind will together pray for peace, and I will follow where it leads me.