What does it mean to have a body that holds onto memories?

I see it in mirrors, in shadows, in glimpses — angles I’ve learned to read but feel like I cannot fully trust. I live inside it. I monitor its responses. I observe its limits. I notice the way it reacts before I can name what triggered it. 

I can look at my hands as they build. I can feel my legs move beneath me, my arms bend and contract. There is no rupture here — no trauma that I can point to, no dramatic moment of separation. How can my body know, remember, and feel so much, but be foreign. 

My body knows things before my mind does. It flinches, tightens, recoils, warms. It remembers things I’ve forgotten. It responds to voices, movement, spaces — before my mind has time to process them. 

Each feeling, each emotion, becomes a part of my physical being, even when my conscious mind doesn’t recognize it. There are moments when I feel pain or fear or nostalgia as if my body is replaying moments without me. We cannot separate from our past because our bodies will always remember.

Just a sudden shift in the air, a drop in the chest, an echo with no origin point.

I have myself and my body and how lucky I am to be alive.
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