Ghosts From My Past

We all have those voices in our heads that seem to take pleasure in berating our very existence. These voices sound suspiciously like our very own, and they tell us things like we’re fat and ugly, we’re an idiot, no one likes us, and that we can’t be a writer if we choose to. We try not to listen to these ghostly voices haunting our thoughts, but the more we hear them, the easier they are to believe.  

I bring this up because the ghosts have been plaguing me for many months now, and I can’t seem to shake them. I always think I’ve pushed them far enough down, but they keep reappearing to wreak havoc on me. These days they are a low, constant drone playing continually in my head, affecting how I interact with people. I am withdrawn at public gatherings when I would normally find people to introduce myself to, overly insecure about the most mundane things I say, caring so much about what other people think that it almost paralyzes me.  I feel like building a moat around my house, filling it with alligators, and daring anyone to try and get in.  Simply stated, I want to retreat from life...if only for a little while. I don’t like it, don’t want to remain here, but something tells me that this is where I need to be –for now anyway. But how do I rest in that? Am I supposed to rest in it? 

I recently spoke to an old and dear friend who saw me one Sunday, quickly duck out after church. She knows that I usually hang around until they kick me out, and called me later that evening to see how I was doing. She has always been able to see through any public ruse I put on to try and fool people. So when I told her I was doing just fine, she didn’t buy it, and by the end of our conversation I was in tears because I knew the ghosts had snuck up on me yet again and I didn’t even realize it. 

These ghosts aren’t necessarily bad, they are the constant reminder that there are painful things I’m avoiding, and they return time and again to force me to deal with these issues.  Each time I refuse, I think I’ve beaten them, but they are merely lying in wait until the next opportunity arises. That little girl who was oft teased, and frequently dismissed, has remained with me all these years, and the voices still lurk because she was never able to talk about any of it. This may sound like psycho-babble mumbo jumbo to some of you, but I’m a firm believer that we are affected much more than we think by the words used to hurt us.  

Of course I’m not the only person that continues to bear the scars of some past hurt, this blog post is meant as an encouragement to all of us to take these things head on and to stop pushing them away. Whatever the origins of your hurt might be;  an overly critical parent that you could never please, a spouse who is cruel and controlling, siblings who verbally abused you, whatever your ghostly voices are, don’t ignore them. You may believe that you have overcome that pain, and hopefully you have, but if the voices still trouble you, it could be because you are still stuck in the past with the ghosts.

Feel free to share some of your stories in the comments section below.

-Alice from The Block