the thing i almost didn’t say, the really dangerous honest version, is that sometimes, when a song shuffles through, or a certain light hits the dust motes dancing above the floorboards just so, catching the ghost of something i used to feel, there’s this quick flicker behind my eyes, like a memory i can almost touch, and my spine still gets that little twitch, that quick jolt just under the skin, a phantom echo of dread, but now it’s like my body is just running an old program, a test that doesn't even connect to the mains anymore, it’s just the memory of tension, not the actual clamp, and i realize that the real work wasn't even about fighting those old familiar aches anymore, it was about letting them pass through, recognizing them without grabbing hold, like the steam rising from my black coffee, just there for a moment, then gone, no need to try and contain it, just letting my hands relax at my sides where they’re finally hollow and not trying to hold onto anything that was never meant to be solid anyway, just letting myself be carried by this quiet current that’s become so utterly normal i sometimes forget how much i used to thrash against it, trying to define myself by the struggle itself, now it's just this steady hum in my bones.