Soulburn

I need to write about something a little different today.

I understand, intellectually, that remembering my fundamentalist and homeschooling days is painful yet constructive. Painful because as I work through these memories, more details come back to me, and I begin to feel the emotions I had to suppress at the time as they now bubble up to the surface. Constructive because I know that writing here is helping me to process those emotions and to begin outlining a more coherent narrative of my childhood and adolescent memories, which is something I've never had. Memories formed during traumatic experiences tend to differ from normal, everyday memories in their fragmented and jumbled nature, so writing through these years, putting these events to virtual paper, is creating a new story for my life. I know that in time I will benefit from these explorations.

But there is a downside to all of this mental spelunking. As I reflect upon my past, I've begun to recognize connections between the discrete snapshot memories that pop unexpectedly into my head and larger events or developments that have occurred in my life. And that hurts in a way that's hard to describe.


Last weekend I went to my son's football practice and got sunburned. I know better than to go out without sunscreen, but while I always remember it for my kids, I tend to forget to use it on myself. Now my skin is pink and tender, and every touch is painful. When I go outside, the wind makes my clothes brush against me and I wince. The gentle spray of water in the shower is unbearable. Lately, I've been feeling something similar emotionally, as if my internal self is sunburned. I guess you could call it soulburn. Every memory I stumble across, every trigger I encounter, every present-day challenge I confront, touches on a kindred place inside of me that is already sensitive from age-old injuries, and the long-forgotten ache comes to the surface with a vengeance.

These are the times that bring my old companion and foe, depression, back to walk by my side again. My therapist would probably call it grief, but at this point semantics seem irrelevant. I have to believe, or at least hope, that my soulburn will fade and this constant crushing pain will ease with time.