Lately I have felt haunted.
And not in the general sense, where I am just kind of spooked and alienated from myself and feeling unreal.
No, this is the more active form, where I feel like there is a large mass of fear and dread and anger in me that I have been dodging via distraction for a long time while it gets closer and closer and bigger and bigger.
Well to hell with that. Time to turn and hold out my hand to the ghost that haunts me.
Me : Hello little ghost. Sorry I have been so hard to reach. I guess I was too scared to deal with you. For that I apologize. Now, what is it you want to tell me?
Ghost : …I’m scared.
Me : Okay. Scared of what?
Ghost :…dunno. Nothing. Everything. Too much everything.
Me : Too much everything? You mean…. too much stimulation?
Ghost : …yes. And no. Too much in. Not enough out.
Me : I see. Do you mean…. too much stimulation and not enough emotional outlet?
Ghost : (nods) So much feels to do, so little feels done. Feels build up, clump together, turn into me. Then you ignore.
Me : I understand. And again, I apologize. I will try to keep it from getting this bad again. Because the truth is, little guy, that I love you. And you deserve to be listened to instead of having me pretending you don’t even exist. No wonder you became a ghost. I was treating you like one.
Ghost : (nods sadly)
Me : Well that’s all over, little buddy. Now come give me a hug, and tell me all the things you need to say.
We embrace, and as the ghost whispers in my ear, we both slowly fade away,
Well that kind of worked. I get the feeling that there is a lot more that the ghost needs to say to me, but that’s about as far as I can take this experiment right now.
The important lesson, I think, is that when I am feeling depressed and down and angry, I should ask myself whether there is a ghost for me to embrace.
Because once I realize that I am avoiding dealing with my emotions and, as a result, I have a serious backlog built up, I will immediately deal with it.
I don’t like letting problems grow big due to my neglect. That doesn’t keep it from happening, in fact it happens all the time.
But I still don’t like it. And in my private moments, I like to think of myself as someone who is not afraid to face harsh truths.
And that’s true…. for certain values of “harsh”. It’s true that I do not consciously deny the truth and that I do my best to see thing as they really are, no matter what.
But there’s also tons of shit – most of life, to be honest – that I just plain don’t think about because thinking about it makes me feel scared and confused and lost and so I stuff my mind with my distractions instead.
And that gets me through the day, I suppose,
But I am running out of room for new ghosts.
And that’s something I am just going to have to deal with.
More after the break.
Tear down the walls
I feel like that is what I am up to right now : ripping out the senseless and toxic walls that convolute and complicate the free and healthy expression of who I am.
I know why the walls are there. I put them there in order to shield myself from the world. And over the years, I have added a lot of layers to those walls.
That’s because adding a layer has been my go-to defense mechanism whenever I feel like life and reality are getting too close for many, many years.
Just like an oyster. Oysters secrete the chemical that can become a pearl in response to an irritating object lodged between its flesh and its shell. This has the immediate effect of wrapping the object in a thin layer of pearl and thus makes it less rough and jagged and therefore less irritating.
And presumably, most of the time, that lets the oyster flush the irritant out of its system without it doing too much damage on the way out.
But when the object is too big or too intractable, the oyster just keeps pumping out the pearlescent fluid and the pearl just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
I’ve got some pretty big pearls that I need to dislodge in order to free myself from the death spiral I currently call my life.
The challenge, then, in ripping down the aforementioned walls is not just the usual problem with making any large change to oneself, namely dealing with the chaos and uncertainty that comes with big change, but also the subtler and more insidious issue of having to keep myself from adding more layers to replace the ones I am removing.
After all, this adding of layers is my primary involuntary response to the feeling that reality has gotten too close to me. It’s a reflex action. Those are hard to prevent.
So I need to go into this with the firm knowledge that it will be scary at first and I will want to run and hide and put as many layers between myself and the real world as possible no matter the cost.
But because I know this is going to happen, I can choose not to obey. To stick with the scary thing long enough to get used to it and see that it is really not so scary after all, and then it can fade into the background to be part of the new normal.
You must endure long enough to adapt. Amazing things can unfold when you resist the urge to flee for a few extra seconds.
It’s trick when you have a mind that can move very fast, because you can put so much distance between you and the thing you are fleeing in just a few moments.
But if you hang in there, I swear, it will change your life.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.