Reptilian Surrender
There are times you need to have the courage to surrender to your more tender and fragile parts and trust that you have the strength within you to grow and heal. When you are ready, you will rise from your slumber, stronger, and more beautiful than you were before.
Sometime in August, my therapist gave me a small spiral-bound notebook. On the cover is a holographic image of pink cherry blossoms hovering over a teal blue background. It’s tacky and cheap. In it, I was supposed to write my happy memories.
“Keep them brief, like snapshots”, she said. “and add a few lines everyday. When you are feeling overwhelmed, or triggered, you can flip through them and remember better times. When you accumulate positive emotions, more positivity will flow into your life. Remember: Where your attention goes, energy flows.”
I wrote “Happy Memories Journal” neatly on the first page and started writing that day. I haven’t touched it in a while, but I flipped through it recently to see if it might help pull me out of a slump. Sadly, I couldn’t connect to most of what I had written. Those stories were written by a different me. Yes, they are my memories, but reading them felt strangely uncomfortable, almost embarrassing. However, the last entry stuck out from the rest. It read:
How do you know if you are happy, or just controlling the symptoms of your mental illness by following a prescribed protocol of behaviors?
- Carefully titrated medications bring you down when you need to sleep, give you energy when you need to perform, and keep your moods and impulses in a moderate and acceptable range. Take them.
- Eat and sleep at the same time every day.
- Keep the intake of artificial stimulants like caffeine and alcohol to a minimum.
- Meditate and do yoga to stay grounded in your body, and get regular exercise.
- Stimulate your curiosity by reading and listening to podcasts.
- Do fun things. Dance, laugh, play.
- Take care of your relationships. Schedule time to reach out to important people in your life.
- Do one thing at a time. Finish it.
- Pay bills, go to appointments, show up for life.
- Stop and breathe when strong emotions arise.
- Stay focused at work, follow through on schedule.
These are the things that you do on a daily, or near daily basis to maintain effective executive functioning. Still, deep inside of your emotional being, you are crying out for something that you cannot name, cannot describe. The sadness of a thousand days of disappointment weighs on your chest. You are drawn into a dark place that feels like a heavy, soft blanket.
You rest your cheek on your fist and gaze down at the page where you are writing these thoughts and wonder, “What now? Too many people in this world love me to give up on this life.” You wish they didn’t, and you could disappear into dust.
Do you know who you are?
Do you know what you like?
Does it matter? Or is it enough to?
Some “Happy Memories Journal”, I thought, as I read that entry. Yet, I still believe in this protocol, and try to follow it dutifully. It’s so beautifully logical and formulaic, and gives me a sense of agency over my life. It’s like an adult colouring book. If I stay within the lines, I will make a (near) perfect mandala. I will keep my emotions within an acceptable range, and be able to function as a dignified, and productive member of society.
There is one problem. Life is unpredictable. It takes wild, and fantastic turns. When my trauma is triggered, everyday life feels like living in a creepy funhouse. The trick floor shifts under my feet. Running through the barrel of fun, I fall down over, and over again. The world is reflected through a maze of distorted mirrors lining dark corridors. The compressed air-jets shoot up and make me jump with fright as my skirt flies up around my ears. Freddie the Tramp Clown is pointing and laughing at my awkward underwear. It is terrifying and exhausting.
Yesterday, I confessed to my dad in a text, “I have not been feeling well for a long time. I have just been going through the motions.” I continued to type, “I am tired of feeling. My energy has left me. I am sliding inside of myself like a snake turning inside out.” I deleted that last line before hitting send. “Don’t be a drama queen. And what the hell is an inside-out snake, you idiot”, I scolded myself.
Today he sent me this quote:
Surrender is the strongest, most subversive thing you can do in this world. It takes strength to admit you are weak, bravery to show you are vulnerable, courage to ask for help. It’s also not a one-time gig; you don’t just do it once and move on. It’s a way of existing, a balancing act. — Richard Rohr, The Power of Surrender
I teared up when I read the first lines of my dad’s text, put my phone down, closed my eyes, and brought my hand up to cover my mouth as I gasped for air. I was so moved by the way these words meant that he truly saw me. He accepted me, and was giving me permission to just be where I was at that moment: weak and vulnerable, curled up like a ball inside my head. I thought about the text that I didn’t send. It made more sense. After months of mammalian flight and fight, I had become reptilian, and was looking for a woodpile to slither under and hide.
In The Skinny on Snakes, Susan Shea writes, “When a snake is ready to shed, [she] stops eating and slithers to a safe place. [Her] outer skin becomes dull and dry. Fluid from the lymphatic system spreads under this skin, separating it from the new skin beneath it. This fluid gives the snake’s eyes a gray or bluish cast and clouds [her] vision.” Shea continues to describe how after a few days the fluid is reabsorbed into the snake’s new skin. Her eyes clear. Her body expands and contracts as she rubs her head on rough surfaces to loosen the layer of old skin. Eventually, slithering her way forward, she turns herself inside out, and she’s free. She casts off her old skin — a dull and worn sheath, full of mites and ticks — and leaves it behind like a dirty old sock. Her new skin is clean and bright. I imagine the technicolor definition of her scale patterns and slender body as a dazzling vision of rhythm in motion as she flicks her tongue and skates away into the tall cool grass.
This made me think that maybe it’s okay to be a snake turning inside out right now. Instead of the bloody meat pulp that flashed in my demented mind as I was writing that text, it’s actually a beautiful act of self care and renewal. While resting in safety — blind, weak, and vulnerable — a mysterious natural process unfolds. My eyes may be cloudy now, but I can surrender and have faith that vision, colours, and light will return again. I may be constrained under a heavy blanket of parasite-ridden thoughts now, but can I surrender and trust that I will be able to go forward and break free. When the scales fall from my eyes, and I throw off the blanket, I imagine the conga will strike the first beat. As a dazzling vision in royal blue sequins and feathers under lights of the the disco ball, I will throw back my head in bliss, and dance to the rhythm of the tumbaó.
