Ghosts

One of my super powers is my ability to move on easily. From things, from people, from past experiences. I’m swift to remove things that no longer serve me or a specific purpose, or that I otherwise deem to be of no value. I’m not bragging about this because I don’t really view it as a positive or otherwise charming quality, but it is very much part of who I am and it’s become a trusted resource to me that I’ve learned I rely on; Resiliency is my imaginary friend. I’ve actually become quite sharp at knowing when it is time to move away from something or someone. In my younger and less courageous years, I bargained a lot, and spun my wheels in denial to push against those feelings, determined to hang on when I felt the tilt. I wasted a lot of energy doing so, because I’ve learned you cannot force anything in place if it is meant to move away. I think now that I’m nearing close to 40 (OMG)… I’ve slightly overcorrected and I sometimes preemptively or prematurely try and move things past me, or move on from it instead. I don’t know if I’m doing it right or wrong, but I am doing it (whatever it is).

Sometimes I like to nostalgically day dream, I think that may be why I enjoy music so much. Music can take you places in your mind that don’t otherwise make sense or feel reachable in realty. I can find these unexplored wave lengths within music and reflect on my life, my feelings about my life, people, my feelings about people, and so on, and it’s a safe and curious way to touch what isn’t actually accessible. It’s also a way for me to deeply explore what I feel are untouchable areas of other people’s lives too. I can think about them and become curious about things or experiences of theirs that I don’t feel entitled to know or ask otherwise; it’s an invisibility cloak. And this precise type of exercise is really the only way I choose to travel back to anything I’ve personally moved on from. It’s a brief and dreamy way of re-visiting a time or a person or a feeling that is off limits to where I exist now. The key element here being brief.

But back to my initial point, I just don’t dwell. I am *generally* unaffected by past trauma, I am not suffering “despite” insert childhood reason here. My lived experiences have absolutely shaped me, but I have not subscribed to any narrative in my life where I routinely say “I am this way because this happened to me, and I feel victimized or metaphorically handicapped because of that thing, person, experience, whatever”. I just…don’t ever point a finger at a why as a way of explaining or legitimizing where I am now.

And this isn’t because I don’t want to go looking for a why or better understand the psychology behind who I am. Trust me, I know where the ghosts are. Psychoanalysis is fascinating, and I do understand it’s such a critical element of humanity and establishing authentic connection with others (and understanding others, for that matter). I just, don’t acknowledge those experiences of mine because it really doesn’t serve me now. Don’t we all just have too many things going on to spend time thinking about that stuff anyway?? I think once we know our “why”, we should name it and then move the fuck on from it. It requires so much energy to carry that baggage around – who has the time!?

I think about wounds and emotional pain, and I wonder why I’m mostly unbothered in this area. And it’s not because I don’t feel things to my core. I’m an ISFJ on the Myers Briggs spectrum, so an introverted personality type with feeling, observing and judging traits. I sense and feel a great deal, but it’s a hot sear, not a smolder. And I just…move along. For the record, I characterize myself as happy, adjusted, thoughtful, aware, thankful, unharmed, healthy. (Honestly, what a fucking gift to be 38 and those words are what bubble to the surface). Praise be.

However, I’ve quietly observed something in myself over the last few years that I want to acknowledge and name, in hopes that I can, as I shared above, move the fuck on from it. But if I’m being really honest, I don’t know if I can. What if there are ghosts that are actually shadows? Dark familiar shapes that are sort of always behind your light? What if certain triggers never actually release their pull on my darkest/weakest core memories? I don’t have this answer, I just have this white void of a page that I call into in hopes I hear an echo.

My Dad was an addict. He was addicted to narcotic pain medication and alcohol, and he abused the shit out of it the entire time I knew him outside of the last few years of his life where he felt far away and unfamiliar (which I deeply regret and wish I could change). He did not abuse me, though I was aware even as a young child that he could swing violent, and probably did toward others. He was not a happy drunk person, he was melancholy or angry/resentful. I do not hold memories of this being directed at me, but as a child, you still get caught in the spider webs of your parents despite being small and low to the ground. I sincerely wish I had known this person at another time in his life.

The effect this did have on me overtime was to recoil from anything that felt like a loss of control, and to distrust neurological tampering; Both in myself and others. And I’ve learned that a trigger for me is behavior that feels or mimics addiction or binging. This is true for both my own behavior and what I observe in the people I feel close to, rely on, and care about. I become very concerned, rather quickly, that people are at risk for the addiction wolf slinking up disguised as a fun, harmless sheep. I think my barometer for this analysis is broken, because I’m terrified of the worst case scenario and this is the trend I’ve felt seep into my consciousness over the last few years. This doesn’t so much create fear in me, but it breeds anxiety and I think my anxiety is perceived by others as misplaced criticism or something colder. And as a way to turn it all inward (there is the control mechanism) I become obsessive with making changes to my own behaviors to root out any shred of possibility that I have come addicted to anything vicey. Alcohol, food, working out …whatever I think requires a checking-up. I’ve realized it’s this ironic hamster wheel of irony. Girl has trauma. Girl moves on from trauma. Girl worries normal behaviors are actually the trauma coming back, so girl immediately engages super power of moving on from these behaviors. Girl realizes super power is actually trauma response – thus, the circle is complete!

I don’t know how to relinquish this, but I know that this hairline fracture in my steely sense of self is there. I know its there. I acknowledge it’s there. It’s name is addiction. I am not an addict. I am happy, adjusted, thoughtful, aware, thankful, unharmed, healthy. I am loved. I love.