1. Oh, that isn’t me. I was talking to a rental agent that’s helping me find an apartment up north who told me their service was for folks who were ready to move now. I shrugged as I said it and paced around the house on the phone with her. There was this familiar deflated-ness in me that felt stale, almost fake, like it was a reaction I was performing because my body had known that way for so long. The awareness was churning and I cocked my head as I looked at my hand that was in a loose fist. I paused her and said, wait, wait, actually that it is me, I am ready.
2. My coach knows I am a visual learner so she held up two clenched fists on our Zoom call. This is you, she said. She turned her fists and opened her palms so they were facing upwards, open, exposed, as if ready to receive. Let’s be this.
3. Feelings are patterns of energy that surpass time. It’s why you can think back to an embarrassing moment in high school and your cheeks can still get red 10 years later. It’s why when you lose someone, you can think back to how they made you feel and experience that, right here, right now, and it’s almost as if they never really left.
I can feel it in my body, perfectly, still, 16 years later. An imprint on my psyche that I’m just starting to gently rub out. With each soft kneading, the memories spark up, so painfully crystal clear:
4. The day had finally come for camp pick up. I saw my dads Acura driving up through the traffic circle. It was like I was coming back from war and seeing my family for the first time in years, only it had been two weeks and it was an expensive summer camp and they accidentally drove past me. They hadn’t recognized me. I had lost so much weight from not eating. You looked like a bobble head, my mom told me afterwards. I hadn’t realized I wasn’t eating.
5. I was 11 and everyone was 12 because I was young for my grade. I hadn’t had a successful sleepover yet. (Successful meaning I fell asleep okay and did not call my mom to come get me early). I had just gotten braces to close the numerous gaps between my teeth, none of which touched. The metal bands would always poke out in the back, cutting my gums up, adding more discomfort to my already deeply uncomfortable, right-around-the-corner-from-puberty body. The cool, not very friendly girls that came every year had pin-straight hair and the twisted American Apparel headbands across their foreheads. I had curls which I didn’t know how to handle yet because mom would normally blow dry my hair at home so I got the blue herbal essence shampoo and conditioner, hoping that would tame them. It didn’t.
6. All my cabin mates were receiving mail and packages from their family every day. I didn’t get any for a week with no explanation other than, “nothing today!” A week later, I came back to my cabin to discover a big bundle of letters and a package atop my sleeping bag. Turns out they had mixed my mail up with the other Goldberg.
(I fantasize about charging this camp my therapy bills.)
7. “Please don’t cry.”
I was violently fighting against my feelings. Maybe I was unable at the time to find the words to capture the emotional intensity or maybe I was just avoiding the pain of truly acknowledging it.
8. The third entry was a countdown calendar. I never got to the final day, but the creation of it itself holds a story: We don’t create countdowns when we are trying to hold onto precious time. Countdowns celebrate the fact that time IS passing as you find satisfaction in the act of crossing off each day. As kids we would countdown until Christmas, spring break, or our birthday because we wanted to get to that destination faster. But never would we create a countdown whilst on the best vacation of our life or in the middle of summer break, for why would we want to focus on the dwindling, the nearing the end of something so great? Why would we want to come face to face with that truth every day? Unless the end was something we yearned for. Unless that with each X crossed off, we somehow felt a blip of hope, that it would all be over some time soon.
9. When we go through emotionally intense experiences as a child, we are just trying to find ways to survive. My journal entires captured just that:
“Trying not to cry…please don’t cry.”
“I’m gonna make a list about what I want to do at my grandpa’s house after camp.”
“Today was a long day but I was ok. I made a zipper lanyard.”
“Please dear lord make these days go by fast. I’m gonna pray to God. Actually I’m gonna pray every night from now on. Or at least I will try."
10. When I opened up my week-late package, I saw my dad’s collaged letter. And in that moment I violently flung from feeling forgotten and undeserving, to deeply loved and cherished. (How confusing to experience all those emotions so close together, both for an adult and especially for a little one).
My heart thawed as I read it and my mood had greatly improved, but the 7 days of “I didn’t get mail but everyone else did” still lingered in my body. Oily and heavy. Weighing down in my body well into the next school year until I thought that enough time had passed that I was over it.
11. But unfortunately, time does not heal. (Loving attention does.) Time may numb, but it does not cure.
12. So I’m flushing out the wound now at 27. It is still oozing and sensitive to touch as it was then, now with a thin scab across the top that has begun tearing open quite frequently. The first touch of disinfectant burns it like hell, but then, as the peroxide fizzes, it feels better in a way that you can’t explain. You find yourself saying, I’m ready for the rest now:
13. Medicine #1: validation + normalizing + solidity
(That must’ve been really hard, my love. You were so brave to try something new and can find pride in that even if you didn’t love it.) + (There is nothing wrong with you for feeling the way that you did. It’s okay that you hated it and others loved it. You are not defective. You just have preferences, as do others. You are perfectly okay just as you are.) + (I’m still here. I’m always here. I’m not going anywhere.)
14. Medicine #2: her music + a dance together
Baby Kristen loved to dance for her parents and their friends during dinner parties in the backyard. But 11-year-old Kristen had grown up to refuse to dance out of fear of embarrassment despite loving music. And so the final medicine would therefore be dancing together, of course.
Music rivals smells when it comes to stirring up past memories. As your body recognizes and excites at the same moments in the song that your younger self did, the connection to that past version of yourself forges itself across decades without you needing to do a thing. (It is then when you feel the truth that time is not as linear as we think.) Let’s begin:
Queue up her song (’Here in Your Arms’ by hellogoodbye) and close your eyes as it begins. Your earthly vision won’t help you now. This is a job for inner vision, the type that sees best amongst the dark within. Imagine Her before you, with her mouth full of braces, lanky limbs, baby boobs, all of it. She might be shy at first, hesitant around who are you. Secretly curious but cautious, wondering yet slightly skeptical. That’s okay. As the gentle beat begins, softly begin to flow to the song. This is safe to do. Show her that. Small dance moves as we ease into it. “We’re just playing,” you say to her with a cheeky grin. Her eyes sparkle a little as she feels your loving attention on her and only her. She starts to loosen up. The beat is growing to the first chorus and she can’t help herself as she begins to sway. She is relaxing before you because she feels safe to do so and you smile and tear up witnessing it all unfold. The song is building and building and she’s no longer looking at you because the music is in her body now, it’s coursing through those sweet awkward limbs and bouncing the curls hanging messily across her face. You both lock eye contact for a split second as the chorus is about to hit: a silent agreement of the mutual unleashing that is to come. A millisecond later and the beat is our god and we’re worshipping it with our bodies. We throw our heads back and forth, jumping around the room in glee. You pause to watch her having so much fun and feel the tears streaming down your face. Look at her go, you think.
15. Medicine can never come too late. It comes exactly when it is meant to. When your body is fully primed and ready to receive it.
16. It is no coincidence that as I have been making moves to soon be far from home, my fists have been tight and I have been 27 and 11 all at the same time. I’m just a girl going to summer camp for the first time.
But the universe always gives us another chance to move through similar situations in a different way.
17. I still fling between clutching my 3 stuffed animals + blanket that I still sleep with and counting down the days until I leave and have my own place again as an adult woman.
18. But impatience is wasteful. What a waste to say, nope, the present isn’t enough. Not this moment, only THAT moment in the future.
19. We make patience enjoyable when we see it as an edging of sort. A powerful build up that is arguably as enjoyable as the climax itself. (If you disagree with this I feel sorry for your lovers.)
20. Patience is a blood relative of trust.
21. The currency of impatience is time that we think we are losing or that we think we don’t have. When we genuinely trust, we realize how rich we have always been as timing no longer is a concern. Impatience wants speed, wants it NOW. Patience says, I want it and I know it’s coming so I can relax now (in the true Now).
22. Time is spacious when you mingle with patience.
23. My time-warp teacher has been when you stand up too fast and blood rushes to your head and reality feels different. At first it feels slightly concerning but then it feels like an other-worldly high where you can’t locate the stressful thoughts that you were feeling moments before even if you tried.
The blood rush is a portal.
24. In its lively silence, I feel the exhilaration of when you are mid-air, holding your breath, as you cannonball into the deep end. And I have never felt more peace.
I love you so much,
Kristen <3
I am a new subscriber to your wonderful substack and I absolutely adored this piece. "15. Medicine can never come too late. It comes exactly when it is meant to. When your body is fully primed and ready to receive it." I love that message. Thank you for writing.