Whispering Wyrd

Here lately I’ve been asking myself what do I really want with the time I have left? Not a “to do” list or a bucket list, but what do I really want for my life now? And also maybe just as much, how do I want to be remembered?

Some people will always remember me as an alcoholic or an addict and I can’t change that. The past is the past and it’s gone. But I can try to make a difference from this point forward. I might not be able to reclaim the decades I lost to addiction but I also don’t have to let those decades be the thing that defines me.

Since getting clean I’ve been thinking a lot more seriously about health and healing. Not just physical health, but emotional and spiritual health too. I’ve written before about things like qigong, meditation, and slowing the nervous system down. But yesterday something really hit me even more… pause.

Not stopping life or giving up on goals or becoming inactive. I mean truly slowing down internally. Pausing long enough to appreciate the people I love, the beauty around me, and the life I still have right now.

Maybe it’s not ironic at all that I became addicted to alcohol and benzodiazepines, both are nervous system depressants. My mind has raced for as far back as I can remember. Constantly scanning and constantly thinking ahead. Trying to prepare for any and every possible catastrophe before it happens. Watching my surroundings and monitoring my body at the same time, always alert for danger or threat.

Part of that, I’ve been told, is “trauma brain” and part of it is my ADD. Whatever the reason is, my nervous system has spent most of my life acting like it’s never really safe.

Yesterday at the memorial, surrounded by so many people, I could feel my mind working overtime. Scanning faces, scanning the whole area, tracking exits. Listening for changes in tone and movement without even meaning to. Not because I didn’t want to be there, but because that’s just what my mind does. I can’t help it. By the time we got home I immediately started searching online for another healing book, another answer, another thing to “fix” myself.

And then it hit me… I don’t need another thing to rush toward right now, I need to slow down. I need to just breathe and learn how to just be here without trying to fix everything.

Meditation has helped with that. So has walking, prayer, qigong, and learning to sit with myself. But that old “hurry hurry hurry” voice and the “scan for threat” mindset are still there a lot of the time. And I realized something else… trauma really does live in the body, just like I was told. Years ago a psychiatrist told me that and I dismissed it as new age hogwash. Now I know they were right. The body remembers what the mind tries to bury or outrun.

That kind of pain can hurt and change a person for decades. I think that’s why taking care of myself still feels weirdly uncomfortable sometimes. Deep down I had the belief for a really long time that I wasn’t worthy of care or kindness. Too many harsh words, too many mistakes, and too many years of feeling broken caused that belief. Those things go deeper than we realize I think.

So now at 60 years old I’m learning something I probably should have learned a long time ago, how to be gentle with myself and how to slow down enough to actually live instead of just surviving or just existing.

I know it won’t happen overnight, real healing rarely does. But I can already feel that slowing down, breathing more deeply, and turning down some of that noise inside is helping. I know I’m not alone in this.

There are so many people out there still carrying old wounds years or even decades after the original pain. So many people whose nervous systems never learned how to rest or relax. I know what that suffering feels like. That’s one reason I keep writing and sharing what I’m learning along the way.

Because other people helped me by sharing their own stories honestly and openly. This is my way of trying to pay that kindness forward.

Amituofo
~Buck