Does anyone tell you about the pit in your stomach?
I’ve got one. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to talk to about it. It won’t go away.
Maybe it’s not quite in my stomach, but it feels like it’s somewhere between there and my heart, it’s lodged right up underneath my rib cage and it won’t go away.
Sometimes it feels like it’s getting tighter, and I feel like the life could be squeezed right out of me or maybe something is on the verge of jumping out of my throat. Sometimes it seems to lessen, and if I’m busy I might even forget it’s there, but it’s insidious, and when I’m no longer distracted, it gradually returns to my awareness and it never goes away.
“I feel this pit and it’s too much so I call my mum or I call my grandmother and I cry and I don’t think in my 27 years of life I’ve ever called them to cry before, I haven’t evem called them to be sad.”
It’s that combined with the swirling thoughts in my head and the feelings; when I fall asleep the thoughts are there, I feel angry and sad, sometimes accepting, but the thoughts are always of him. When I finally wake, after what feels like hours of simple dozing rather than restorative deep sleep, he’s already in my head and it’s like my mind has just been waiting for me to wake up and pay attention to all the things it wants to think about and all the scenarios it’s made up while I was gone. The feelings return and all of it just combines with this pit in my stomach.
I want to vent my frustration, vent and vent and vent, talk about the same thing, the same person, the same feelings, over and over again. Maybe it’ll release this tension. I think to share it with the world like I like to do because sharing helps me to breath and I love seeing people find similarities in my story to theirs and it’s a validation for each other, but then I remember, the platform I have includes his friends and his family. It makes me feel sick because I don’t want to vent for him I just need to get it all out, but what if he learns about it, if he gets shown it…does that mean the possibility of us in the future is completely gone? Would I be okay with that? Even with all this hurt?
It feels so warped. Even with all this hurt, how can I think that if he was truly a good man, an accountable man, a responsible and loving man, that he wouldn’t be able to see past what I need to do to vent without it being a targeted attack?
“But slowly, every so slowly, I think it’s getting a bit easier to breath.”
So I blocked everyone. All of his friends. Not his family, but definitely his friends. Now I can breath a bit more and maybe the I can breath a little bit easier, I’m not sure yet.
It’s important to note, that I am learning. I feel this pit and it’s too much so I call my mum or I call my grandmother and I cry and I don’t think in my 27 years of life I’ve ever called them to cry before, I haven’t even called them to be sad. That’s just not something that we’re supposed to do, vulnerability has always been a weakness, feelings is not something we talk about in the moment we feel them, but I need to. I can’t do this on my own and if I don’t get rid of this pit somehow, then it’ll just fester and rot, and I honestly worry about what I would do.
So I’ve got this pit in my stomach. It won’t go away. But slowly, every so slowly, I think it’s getting a bit easier to breath.
Brittany Tasesa 