Sam’s Journal of Survival

Considering

020126 This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

Considering
Sunday

I read an article today about immersion therapy.

I would not have touched something like that before. The idea alone would have been enough to make me shut the page, walk away, pretend I never saw it. Memories I worked so hard to keep contained were not something I wanted to visit.

Not ever.

But things have changed.

I am not the same person I was when survival was my only goal. I have learned how to stay present. I have learned how to calm my body instead of fighting it. I have learned that fear does not always get to decide for me.

That does not mean I am eager to reopen what I closed for a reason.

It means I am wondering.

The article talked about teaching the body that remembering is not the same as reliving. About choice. About pacing. About control. I read those words carefully, measuring how my body reacted to them.

I did not panic.

That surprised me.

I am not longing for the past to be explained or reframed. What I want is to feel more whole. Less divided between who I am and what my body still remembers.

I miss people.

Friends. Companionship. The possibility of a relationship.

What stops me is not desire. It is the fear of my unconscious reactions. The freezing. The flinching. The moments when my body speaks before I can.

I do not want to hurt anyone. I do not want to explain myself endlessly. I do not want to surprise myself.

So I think this is something I should investigate more. Slowly. Carefully. Without rushing toward an answer.

I am not deciding anything today.

But I am ready to talk.

At my next appointment, on Monday, February 9, 2026, I am going to tell my therapist that I am open to joining a discussion group. Not because I am fixed, but because I am steadier. Because I am curious instead of terrified.

That feels like progress.

I am learning that healing does not always arrive as certainty.

Sometimes it arrives as a question you are finally willing to ask.