Healing is a hole in my soul

by Jim Fitzgibbon

I have a hole in my soul.
This hole is how I experience a trauma that happened to me.

When triggered I trip over my “shoulds”
and into my soul-hole I fall,
my shoulders stiffening, hurts.

Some laughed as if mocking my terror,
unknowing the potential for misunderstanding,
Grieving me, their ‘fallen’ comrade as they were
suffering crippling traumatic shock.
I feared the hole in my soul would swallow more than me
so I used to push away my beloved community,
as if by doing so, I could avoid shame
of not being able to keep them safer and protect them from trauma.
Unaware, mortified, I was actually choosing trauma over collective soul,
We obsessed, as if I the hostage given away, instead of hosting.
Embodying distance and mortification,
Our unspoken relationship turned into unspeakable,
Desolate, isolate.
Deathly freeze.

Until, unnoticed by me at first, desperate now,
From earthy others I allowed into my soul-hole,
elastic life-lines of their love,
quicker than I could flee, or snap.
Courageously they persistently fed through the freeze,
Boldly bridging right across the hole in my soul.
until I met their reach, in mutual respect,
movingly, knowingly beyond all previously known territory,
Thankfully, I gradually became, real again, velveteenly*.

Thus healing,
which began as a single thread
is now many and woven into a trampoline-like,
ground of murmurating authenticity,
landscape looks so unlike the brittleness of no-man’s-land.

This soul-hole is a thread-like material
I hold my threads and weave them as healing spirit,
So I can reach as a life-line
towards someone else’s need
welcoming them home in their turn
to collective soul, velveteenly.

*Reference to Williams, M. (1922). The velveteen rabbit. New York: G.H Doran Co.