Sorrow Of The Soma

I woke around midnight.

As I lay there I could feel the somatic thrum that I am carrying, just under my skin. I let it be, just rested, hoping to fall back into sleep, but sleep never returned to me. I may have touched its surface now and then, but didn’t feel as though I could really access it. 

Eventually at 4:00 I got up and left the room.

Later, just as the sky was beginning to reveal its presence in lighter dark, I asked this question of myself. 

“What is going on in me?”

In moments I felt rising, rising—through my constricted throat, into my eyes, sparking tears.  And then I was sobbing, from deep within. I was surprised, taken aback, devastated. And unable to stop, until it subsided. Eventually.

My ‘I am…’ statement is… ‘I am left.’

I am left by those I love. In this case, living Leavings.

A truth I must just hold. And live… 

Acceptance is not just about metabolising my losses, by experiencing the pain of having to let go of my attachments. The pain, and the grief all remain within my cells, still, after all this time.  All these years.  It seems to me now that acceptance will only truly come when my body is in sync with this other grief work I have done, on the other levels of ‘me’. 

Maybe I am coming into true relationship with my body at last.

adjective: somatic

1. relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind.

   “patients completed a questionnaire about their somatic and psychological symptoms”

   • BIOLOGY

     relating to the soma.