“Gravity Has Hands”

 My heart forgets

how to stand.

The floor doesn’t move

but my pulse does…

117.

127.

Numbers climbing

like panic isn’t invited

but shows up anyway.

I’m upright

and suddenly the world tilts,

not because I’m weak

but because gravity has hands

and it grabs my blood by the ankles.

My chest tightens

like a fist learning a new language.

My vision dims…

not black,

just enough to scare me.

Just enough to say,

lie down or disappear.

My eyes feel like sandpaper,

dry from the effort of staying conscious.

My body whispers, then shouts,

Sit. Now.

Lay down before I drop you.

Cold crawls up my arms.

Shaking follows.

Emotion spills without permission…

not sadness,

not fear,

just overload.

Like every nerve is screaming

at once.

I lay down

and suddenly I’m allowed back

into my own body.

Heart slowing.

Chest releasing.

Vision returning

like it never meant to leave.

But don’t call this anxiety.

Don’t call this imagination.

I have numbers.

I have data.

I have a nervous system

that forgets how to regulate

when I dare to stand still.

I still feed my child.

I still show up.

I just do it in pieces now…

upright in intervals,

resting in between survival.

This is not weakness.

This is a body fighting gravity

every single day

and still choosing to stay conscious.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Split I Had the Other Night

Image
  This isn’t attention-seeking. It’s survival. And it happened again the other night. The other night, I was lying on the living room couch while my husband played his game. Nothing dramatic was happening on the outside: no yelling, no chaos, no confrontation. But inside my body and mind, everything was collapsing at once. I was stressed, angry, sad, and scared. Not the kind of scared where you jump at a noise, the kind that sits in your stomach, tight like a knot, and waits. The kind of scared that comes from medical trauma and not knowing what your own body is doing anymore. And then it started. My vision blurred. Panic came in waves. Suddenly I wasn’t just “me” anymore: I had four perspectives at once. Three main ones, and a fourth that was just watching and smiling because they knew this was going to happen before they left. I was fully aware, enough to cry out for help if I needed to, but awareness doesn’t mean control. Inside, there were parts. There was Blossom, who holds an...
Read more

I’m Not in Love With Myself Yet. But I’m Finally Trying

  I’m not here to tell you I’ve found self-love. I haven’t. Most days I don’t even recognize the person people say they see in me. I still avoid mirrors. I still can’t take a picture without wanting to hide behind filters. I still feel disconnected from my own face, my own body, and the version of me I wish I could be. But I’m here because I finally reached the point where I don’t want to keep living like this. I’m starting trauma therapy — real trauma therapy, the kind that digs into the things I’ve carried for years, the things I never said out loud, the things that made a grown man therapist cry. I’m doing EMDR. I’m facing memories I’ve buried. I’m trying to understand why my body reacts the way it does, why intimacy feels complicated, why sleep apnea takes such a toll on my emotional and physical life, and why loving myself feels like climbing a mountain barefoot. I’m not healed. I’m not confident. I’m not “there.” But I’m here. And that counts for something. This Substack isn’...
Read more

If I Had Known Then What I Know Now, I Would Have Never Trusted This Provider With My Care

Image
    How being dismissed by a cardiologist delayed my POTS diagnosis and taught me the cost of not being believed. I came to this cardiologist seeking ongoing care for clear POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) symptoms. From the very beginning, I explicitly stated that my family and I suspected POTS. From the very beginning, I was dismissed. After testing, I was told by the echocardiogram technician, the nurse practitioner, and  Dr. Michael E. Merhige, MD , all in the same room on the same day, that my results were “normal.” During testing, I expressed dizziness and lightheadedness and said I wanted to stop. Instead of stopping, I was repeatedly asked  why . When my breathing became labored, the echo tech told me to “breathe slower,” as if I had conscious control over what was happening to my body. My heart rate reached  147 while speed walking . They also failed to document my heart rate upon standing, data that would have shown it was already eleva...
Read more