Dear Blog Readers,
Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, the 2 week holiday from school can be a time of having no distractions from thinking about things you can keep away when you’re in your normal routine. In today’s post, April shares what it’s like to celebrate Christmas when your body no longer feels like her own. Thank you for sharing this difficult experience. I’m sure some of our readers can relate.
Take care, and remember to nourish your body, your mind, and the parts inside of you that need to be healed.
Your blog moderator,
Kira
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Like a Guest in my Own Skin
By April George
Two weeks away from school stretches like a long hallway with mirrors on every wall. Each gathering adds another reflection that does not quite line up with the last. I arrive in rooms full of voices and plates and warmth, and I feel my body lag behind me, as if it belongs to the room more than to me. It answers questions before I can. It absorbs looks before I am ready. It becomes a topic I did not consent to discuss.
There is a peculiar grief in being present and yet displaced. I hear my name and feel a tug, then realize the tug is not aimed at me, it is aimed at the shape I inhabit. People speak to it with concern, with curiosity, with casual certainty. They remember an earlier version as if it were a photograph they can still hold. They ask where it went. They ask what happened. They ask with love and with the soft insistence that comes from believing closeness grants access.
Time behaves differently during the break. Days swell with meals that are meant to be simple and celebratory, and nights compress into a tight knot of replayed moments. A laugh pauses too long. A question lands and keeps landing. A compliment skims the surface and sinks. I move through kitchens and living rooms like a guest in my own skin, careful, polite, grateful, exhausted. The body feels borrowed, or rented, or loaned out to the season. It does not move when I ask it to. It moves when it is summoned by a gaze.
What unsettles me most is the loss of quiet ownership. At school, my body is a background hum. Over the break, it is foreground, lit from every angle. I cannot rest inside it because it is constantly being interpreted. I cannot argue with the interpretations because they sound like care. Even silence becomes loud, filled with the echo of what was said and what might be said next.
There is a moment at each gathering when I feel myself split. One part of me wants to be the person I know I am, thoughtful, funny, present, a listener. The other part is pressed flat against the awareness of being seen. That second part takes up too much room. It crowds out the first. I leave conversations early without leaving the room. I nod and smile while something essential steps back and watches from a safe distance.
By the end of the two weeks, I miss the ordinary anonymity of desks and hallways. I miss being recognized for my words and my work rather than my outline. I miss the ease of moving through a day without commentary. Mostly, I miss the simple sensation of belonging to myself. When the break ends, I hope for the return of that small miracle, the quiet alignment of body and self, where I can walk into a room and feel that I arrive as one.
