A Person of Respite

It is rare for a child to understand anxiety. I certainly didn’t. And even as an adult, I can say it took years and years into life after age 18 to understand my heart palpitations and upset stomachs and anger were not just “an emotional spirit” as one of my teachers once told me, but instead an ever-present difficulty to process the world. In life—in childhood—they teach us how to study and write papers and be patient. Our parents and elders and teachers show us good manners and how to do chores and the rules of the road. But rarely do they teach us how to process our emotions. Rarely do they let us know anything else exists outside of sadness and anger. And rarely are we allowed to express it, to understand it, to reckon with the ways in which they seep through nearly every facet of our lives. But I can look back on those younger years and see a little girl full of anxiety about the world at present and the world ahead.

Rarely do they teach us how to process our emotions. Rarely do they let us know anything else exists outside of sadness and anger.

It began to build when things became less easy. I think a part of me was shattered by the realization that a lack of ease, that thing we call adulthood and life, would be permanent. So I turned to the comfort of my grandmother’s arms. I used to pretend to be sick, warming up our thermometers and patting my face with a warm, damp cloth so my parents would drop me off at my grandparents’ home. There, I would rest. My favorite spot was in the warmth of her lap, my tiny head heavy as she smoothed my curly hairs down and grazed my cheeks with her long fingernails. I never told her what was wrong, but instinctively, she seemed to understand. Days out and about in the world for her slowly turned into a life indoors, one that would become worse with greater age. But I didn’t know it then. I only knew of my source of respite, my sounding board, my brief calm amidst the noise. It is a comfort most cherished in my life.