I often feel like my emotions are cyclical – as if there are core memories imprinted on my genome that reverberate throughout my life. Early spring is a time when I feel a greater need to protect myself. As the little green things begin to emerge, I want nothing more than to remain buried. A voice whispers to me, telling me it's safer down here, just stay a while longer.
I search my feeds to see what I was doing 10 years ago, looking for evidence as to why I feel so damn shitty, like my subconscious must be remembering something that I can no longer pinpoint. You might call it depression. But I know it goes deeper than that, these feelings that overpower my present situation are like echoes of something that came before me.
Scientists are saying that you hold trauma in your DNA, that it gets passed down from generation to generation. But they don't say how that looks for the person who's carrying it. I think, for me anyway, it looks like a retreat into myself, and if I'm not careful I can get stuck inside my own head. But it may also mean that I have everything I need within me, if I can just embrace it.
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