Time for salt

This writing project involves an attempt to return to my mother tongue (being pseudovulnerable on the internet, or something like that). I worry I won’t ever get back there — to myself, that is. I’ve spent the past decade making all the most integral parts of myself as small as possible. I’ve been stuck in perpetual motion, afraid to stay in one place. Costs far exceed any cachet.

I come through the door of my therapist’s office too fast — my coat, scarf, and too-heavy bag strewn on the chair where I should sit, headphones ripped out of my ears, glasses off my face. I, for one, have seen enough.

I need to feel the floor beneath me or I might fly off into space. I am touch starved, but wouldn’t admit it. It I lean my head against the wall and sob. I’m already sobbing before I’m there, maybe. My body hurts, and I can’t get away from myself. I am trapped. The carpet I’m sitting on is covered in mites, for sure. My brain distracts itself: if I feel pain, I might need to slow down. So here, have some fear. Mites! I wish I could be at home but can’t conjure the feeling of “home” and think I’ve gone too far. There is truly nowhere left to run. “No contact” — none. I miss the feeling of her hand on my back and feel the urge to rush away the thought and also to throw up.

“I don’t want to be touched,” I snap at a question that hardly registers, and possibly was not asked. Non-truth, as I beg the floor and the wall to hold me up. I picture the big sky, hear the Kinks, and imagine I’m floating in a tea-coloured lake that I don’t visit anymore. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Then, I feel my foot step into a nest of leeches instead of onto the ground. I’m back in the room. I feel my head against the wall. I’m ashamed I didn’t take the time to cry sooner, when I was upright. It’s time for salt.

Years earlier, I learned to use teen-branded tampons in the public washroom of the Dartmouth Sportsplex the morning my mother pulled me by my ankles as I grabbed the rails of my bed and begged not to go swim laps at 6 a.m. in February. “Living near the ocean, it is important to swim well,” my mother would say, handing over a still-damp bathing suit. I wriggled my body. I first tried to use a Diva cup on a camping trip with a cold snap in Northern Ontario, which also happened to be my first period in ten years. Wriggling in a cold tent — Why would I stop?

For my soft departure, I left Halifax-proper for West Pennant in 2015 or so, commuting 40 minutes each way to school and work. After the worst of the traffic on the drive home, the thermometer in my car would drop a few degrees as I approached the coast. I have wanted to get out of Halifax for as long as I can remember. But as I attempted to make a home just outside Halifax, I found relief that made me more afraid. I had never been still in my whole life. More like sand through fingers than a rolling stone

So when I wasn’t frozen with fear, I learned to hike, and when that wasn’t enough, I bypassed the immobilizer and drove to Montreal repeatedly. I devoured long drives with old rules like: no stopping until we hit Quebec. Hotel 12-12. And when we get to Montreal: exclusively by bike in the city. No time in Halifax. I said yes to every work trip until I made a job that involved being away from West Pennant more than being home, as if I was forging a home. Before I was washed up and recovering, I was forming an escape plan.

In West Pennant, I relied on the reliably cold ocean to slow my pulse. I hate the cold, so I can only assume this urge to immerse myself in the frigid Atlantic came over me because I’d never been allowed to stop, so any time I did it felt like my heart was banging around in my rusted out body. Stopping — stillness — has been unsafe at a cellular level. I’ve been stuck in motion because I assumed that if I sat on the floor and cried, I’d get stuck there too. Cold water does not want to keep me. Praise.

From the floor of my therapist’s office when I finally speak, I say something like: “I don’t want to cry,” and then sob a bunch more. They make a sound that feels like understanding, which is disgusting — but also curious. There is a breath that needs no remark. On the way home I practice walking fast and then slow, fast and then slow. Stopping and starting.