Hello, Vision Quest Threshold.
Hello, Day Six of Self-Imposed Quarantine.
Hello, Shadow.
Jade DuBois – 29 March 2020
Today is my sixth day of self imposed isolation. Six days of fighting what’s coming even though I knew it could not be fought. PTSD can sneak up on you. And it’s not always what you think it is. You think you have everything under control and then something suddenly reminds you of a moment, but it doesn’t start off as a memory; it starts off as a feeling. Sometimes a feeling you can’t identify. You just know something isn’t right. You try sitting with it; maybe it’ll pass really quickly, hoping it will anyway. But it doesn’t.
When you go on a vision quest you’re alone for days. Depending on what kind you’re on you likely don’t have food, you might not have water, you either have shelter or you don’t. But here’s the hard part that we don’t get this time: you know there’s an end to it. This one? Where is the end?! So what’s happening with this for me is that it’s reminding me of the aftermath of the brain injury that I received in 1995. Six months after that people were telling me, “get over it! it’s been six months!”; “you don’t look like you’re sick. what’s wrong with you?”; “you don’t look like anything at all is the matter. quit making excuses.”
Except there was still very much wrong. There was still very much not put back together inside of me. It’s one reason why right now my minor, somewhat ignore-able symptoms of this virus impacting our world are causing me distress, because everything in me is saying “you should be over this! it should be done now! why can’t you function? what is wrong with you?” Except there actually is something wrong with me. This is not hypochondria. But just like my brain injury, there is no way to prove it.
If you’re experiencing weird symptoms that remind you of something else that you’ve gone through, maybe this is happening for you too. Maybe you’re on your own Shadow Walk, working through leftover fragments of another challenge in your life. Trust the process. It will make you uncomfortable as hell. But we’re getting into the good dirt now. The foundation of who you were, breaking apart to become who you will be when this is all said and done.
I want you to know that I honor you, your process, your fear, and your grief. I honor how painful the disbelief of others can be. I won’t “hold space” for you in some vague, inconsequential way. I won’t send you “thoughts and prayers” and I won’t demand you “snap out of it.” I recognize that you are staring into an abyss that echoes some of your deepest heartbreak. And what I will do, when you’re ready, is be at the edge of that abyss, holding a hand out for you to take, and we can stand on that edge together, and smile.
Walking Through Water 