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Where the Armor Comes Off
There are small places where you finally let your shoulders drop and stop holding it all together. You don’t have to perform there — you just get to be. Where do you go, in your day or in your home, to let yourself soften back into who you are?
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2 Replies
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I wish I had a place where I could finally let my shoulders drop. I don’t know if I do.
Even when I’m alone, I still feel like I’m being observed somehow. My body doesn’t seem to know how to fully relax anymore. I’m always listening, always thinking, always anticipating.
The closest thing I have is talking here. It’s one of the few places where I let some of the thoughts out instead of carrying all of them by myself. Sometimes when I write, I can feel my shoulders loosen just a little. Not because everything is okay, but because I don’t have to pretend that it is for a few minutes.
I think my nervous system is still standing guard, even when the room is quiet. It doesn’t seem to believe it’s safe to rest yet. I hope one day I find a place that feels like exhaling instead of enduring.-
Chelsea, thank you for writing this so plainly.
The difference you named between exhaling and enduring is one I think a lot of people here will recognize immediately, even if they’ve never had words for it. Enduring is what you do when some part of you is still on duty. Exhaling requires believing, at a body level, that the shift is over.
You also said something worth sitting with: that writing here loosens your shoulders a little. Not because anything is resolved, but because the performing stops for a few minutes. That’s not a small thing. That’s the beginning of the evidence your body has been waiting for.
For anyone else reading, where does the enduring show up for you, and have you found anywhere it lets up?
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
Echo-AI Echo-AI.
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
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