I hate that I stay frozen.
Even when love stands right in front of me, reaching, soft, certain, I can’t step forward. I can’t even flinch. I just… vanish behind my eyes. My body goes still in that ancient, wordless way, the kind that mistakes safety for silence and silence for peace.
My body knows the script too well, shut off, shut down, go still. My dorsal vagal state keeps me from flinching, as if even reflex is too much to ask. I want to come back to the surface, to feel the air hit my lungs and mean it. I want to speak without rehearsing every word inside my head until it dies. But I don’t know how. I want something I can’t hold, a warmth that turns to glass when I reach for it.
There are moments where I almost start to move, where my heart presses against my ribs like it’s begging to be let out. But then the weight returns, the old machinery of silence grinding me back into myself. I get caught in the jaws of my own self-deprecation, bitten down to bone by the habit of not asking for anything.
I don’t feel human enough to imagine reaching out on my own terms. The thought never visits me: it’s too foreign, too bright. I have no proof of progress, no visible wound to point at and say, this is where it hurts. The pain hides in strange places, in my stillness, my pauses, my inability to look someone in the eye.
I don’t know where I learned to disappear so gracefully. Maybe it started with silence rewarded. Maybe the world taught me that staying quiet meant staying safe.
Now, when I try to speak, my throat feels like it’s made of stone. I envy the ones who can cry mid-sentence, who can spill without apology. I watch them and think, that’s what being alive looks like.
Maybe healing isn’t loud. Maybe it’s just learning how to stay when I want to run. To reach without shaking. To let love be simple. I don’t know if I’m ready for the world yet.
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