My body has leaned so much more into lighter intensity recently. Like drinking tea over coffee, salads over everything, silence over sound, sitting outside instead of numbing, ditching all numbing mechanisms in favor of genuinely feeling something. It’s almost like when you stop numbing, the intensity of an experience becomes less appealing. It becomes draining, having to fully experience both joyful and painful things. The body seeks to “numb” through peace rather than anything else. It does so through consistent experiences—like daily meditation, exercise—so that instead of bouncing between 50% and 90%, experiences lie comfortably between 75% and 80%.
I’m still in that adjustment phase where I’m expecting fireworks and intensity with people, because it’s something I see others experience. That’s what I expect love and attraction to be. Silence followed by moments of extreme emotional intensity. But this weekend I officiated my best friends’ wedding, and it opened my eyes to what love should feel like under this new definition. Not just the wedding, but the surrounding events with all the attendants are what stirred this stew in my mind. Sitting at breakfast in comfortable silence. A random, specific compliment. Paying for a meal and refusing to let them pay you back. Offering to let someone stay at your house. Confronting someone when they’re being an ass. I hardly felt any of these individual acts, but it’s the calm and safety they amounted to that made them worth while.
I’ve been feeling that peace more, but it’s jarring. There are days where I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I think I misunderstand it, so I demonize it. Or I try to ruin it. I cant stand the calm, so I look for chaos. Or sometimes, I brew some from home. Like I felt this calm all last week and even this weekend, but I’m so afraid of it that I’ve had myself convinced I was depressed. I don’t think that’s true though. I’m terrified of it, but I’m learning to trust it.