Ghost Walk
Long term sobriety is full of complexity and layers.
When I say I work hard to reconcile the past, what I mean is: I spend a large portion of my time learning to feel so I can experience all of life. I am a lifelong expert in the art of self anesthesia. Since I quit drinking I can feel well-seasoned, capable, and wise.. and then also like a brand new beginner- all at the same time- in an insistent conflicting way that makes life confusing and hard to understand more than I’d like to this far along in my recovery.
I imagine myself, as 2022 me, going back and introducing myself to all the hers I was back then, and then..and then. Me meeting myself.
When I think of doing a ghost walk through my own life I wonder…what would I do when faced with the reality of my own self?
What would it be like to see 13 year old me up in the neighborhood treehouse? Getting fingered and vigorously dry humped by the older teenage boy who wore Levis, his hard adolescent penis grinding into my hairless pubis in a way that bruised and hurt, but also made me feel found. What about me at 10 having my bobbed brown hair pulled out in chunks by the husky squinty eyed younger boy who lived across the street? He pulled my hair hard I couldn’t breathe. Would middle aged today me push that mean kid down, pull then me aside, whisper to her that I understand now, I think know what that kid who pulled hair was so angry about..maybe it had to do with his creepy bald step father who routinely wore loose athletic shorts with no underwear, legs spread wide, his wrinkly flaccid penis innocently as an afterthought on a deck chair.
What would it be like for us when I look 15 year old me in the eye and say we could have told that boy from French class no and gotten away with it. We could have gotten away.
What would she think about me? Would me at 23 be like wow you’re 51!?! We actually lived? Would she be shy? Ashamed of me now like I was ashamed of me then? Or would her shoulders sag with relief?
What about 31 year old me.. the one who woke up in cold puddles of pee, mattress soaked, so drunk the night before that I wet the bed, again- what would she think? Would her mouth fall open when she met me, my starting to grey hair, would she recognize me, yet see a stranger?
What would this 51 year old today me do or say if I went back in time to meet myself there and then? Would I be horrified? Detached? Loving? Still in denial?
I like to think I would rush in to save myself, save her, save all of me. That I would trample all the time traveling rules and tell her all the things I know now and together we would stop all the damn suffering. We’d build a reputable solid lively life that I would be proud of much
sooner than right now.
Alas. Impossible,
no matter how hard I wish I could make it true.
This makes me sadder than almost anything else, that I can’t rewrite the bottomless suffering I did while I waited to wake up from the things my life did to me, the things I did to me.
It can be hard to tell who’s the ghost. Is it me, or is it all the me’s that I have been? Is the ghost current me, haunting my life, still living on the outside of it all- even though I quit drinking almost ten years ago. You just can’t hold up the string of “I quit drinking” as the shiny prize anymore. It’s..rudimentary? to celebrate not drinking at your cousin’s wedding when you quit seven years ago. You’ve gotten way past that part. The drinking was definitely a practically impassable coping mechanism, and quitting is definitely a glorious hallelujah miracle, and then there’s all the things that are still here
even though you don’t drink anymore you still have the things.
Those are the ghosts?
I’ve been in weekly therapy for almost 8 years and we are just now getting to the place where I am ready to surrender more and meet myself- I’m just starting learning to cry without automatically stopping in the next breath. “Where did your tears go?” my therapist will ask, and now I finally know what she means. I can remember crying past the first surge of tears, crying so hard, is crying a ghost that can be resurrected? I can remember the uncomfortable lump, that big painful lump of uncried tears in my throat- head down walking into school, or shoulders slumped small at the dinner table- anything anything to stop them from spilling over. Gulping hiccups from crying so hard when I was by myself- at 5, at 15, and then somehow somewhere along the way I learned to shut down and stop crying.
I think I remember that getting drunk was a way I got numb but also gave myself permission to feel- I might have cried a lot when I was hammered. I don’t remember. I can remember feeling dramatically bereft, my body remembers shaky inhales after long cries, but I can’t remember the reasons why. Everything?
If I’m here now, and also like a ghost in my head when I remember things like that, what does that mean? Am I only a ghost then? I actually feel like the ghost now, that this today me is the apparition and I am haunting my life.
Current life can feel like a lovely surprise, the old me coming back to life in a way that is necessary and yet painfully real, my face crumpling, tears filling my eyes. Falling. Stopping.
Starting again.
The ghost really is this woman, this me, almost ten years sober, learning to continue the cry. I am the one who flies through walls, rattles the chains. I am the one who believes the illusion, flickers the lights, becoming a reality we can all agree on.
Until next time,
No comments:
Post a Comment