
Today, I am trying my best to have a duvet day. I emphasise “trying”, as I can’t adequately say how hard I find it to relax. Even if I seem calm, it’s rare that I feel I truly am: there are always varying degrees of disquiet simmering beneath the skin, I so often feel that my proverbial lid is ever-shaking.
Have I always been this way? It seems so. There’s an agitation that I feel is inbred, that I’ve inherited through soul, blood and sinew. And let’s not forget experience. Trauma, whatever an individual’s personal definition, is so ingrained within our genes: it forms the ground of our selves before we breathe outside of the womb.
I feel like I have, lately, become deeply, intrinsically disconnected from pleasure. It happens insidiously, unconsciously; by the time I’ve noticed, like spilled obsidian ink, it has permeated everything.
I’m not happy feeling like this. It’s interwoven, the feeling of having to ask for permission to be, however I want to be; to just be. I try, so much. And I am trying always.