Total Recall

For fifteen months, I have carried a strange prayer into therapy. Help me remember. Then, almost beneath my breath, I add the part that makes the first part possible. Safely. There is a contradiction in asking God to open a door I have spent most of my life leaning against. My shoulder knows the wood. My feet know where to brace. Somewhere along the way, holding it closed became so familiar that I stopped recognizing how much strength it took. I called it getting through the day. On some days, that was exactly what it was. Remembering has been difficult. There are years between me and what happened, years filled with work, family, responsibility, and all the ordinary things a person can stack against a door. But time alone does not explain the distance. Part of me wants to look back. Another part still reaches for the lock. They both come to therapy. One speaks. The other watches the exits. I used to think remembering would look like a movie finally coming into focus. A scene. A sequence. Something I could describe clearly enough to put down afterward. Instead, there are times when I have more sensation than language. Fear moves before I can explain it. My body reacts while my mind is still trying to understand what I am approaching. I am sitting in a room where I have chosen to be, with someone there to help me, and still I have to work to remain in that room. I once described those waves of fear through an image from an old cartoon: a white streak down a character’s back, a soul briefly leaving its body. It was the closest picture I had. Something inside me seemed to pull away while I tried to stay. There is nothing funny about the feeling, but sometimes an absurd image gives me a way to describe what otherwise has no words. Sometimes that is how I get through the next sentence. During my last session, I spent almost thirty minutes in exposure therapy. Thirty minutes is a small piece of a calendar. From inside that experience, it felt much larger. I had prayed for the chance to approach what frightened me. Then I found myself approaching it, hurting, afraid, and wondering how I could have wanted something so difficult. I wanted the possibility on the other side. I wanted to be able to touch part of my history without losing the rest of my day to it. I wanted more room inside my own life. The panic has changed over time. I notice different physical reactions now. I am learning to describe those changes without pretending I understand every one of them. The intensity feels real. But intensity cannot tell me whether every detail is accurate, and suffering cannot be the only measure of progress. I need room for uncertainty, too. A missing piece can remain missing without becoming another failure I hold against myself. I called this pursuit total recall. I understand why. After so much silence, I wanted access to my own story. I wanted to stop turning away from myself. There was something almost defiant in the title, as though I could reclaim every room if I could just find every key. Now I wonder what else I am trying to recall. My voice, perhaps. My ability to make a choice while fear is present. The part of me that can leave a difficult session, feel the ground beneath my feet, and recognize that I have somewhere to go afterward. There is a life waiting beyond the work of remembering. I do not want to spend so long searching the ruins that I forget I am allowed to build. So I still carry that prayer. Help me remember. Safely. And beside it, another is beginning to take shape. Help me return. To this room. To this breath. To the life still asking something of me. I have spent years trying to reach the person I was. When I find him, I want to have a present to bring him home to.