The haunting

Now I've finally figured it out.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago when I told her that I carry my ghosts around with me. That's where they live. The only place, really. Because I have a huge investment in keeping them alive in there.

Then I figured it out. It's not the individuals who are the ghosts. It's the collective whole. The entirety of the first 6 years of my life. Drum roll...the ghost is of an unbelievably happy early childhood. Golden sunlight drenches the whole damned thing. And it is damned. Because it ended. And therein is the poison that has leeched strength, surety and pretty much most of the satisfaction from a job well done that I could glean for years. It is absolutely impossible to live up to that time. It is impossible to re-create the feeling of being beloved on that scale, safe in that way, and not exposed to the darkness.

So intervening years whittled away at plenty of the good-will of the universe. And I stubbornly held onto the remnants- be they the paper dolls that my Grandma bought me when I was 5, to the memory of the plants that grew in my back yard. All of it is in there- suspended in amber. Just waiting to be re-created. But that's impossible, right? Because I'm not suspended in amber with the memories and relics. I have been touched by the darkness that came later. I have been altered irrevocably. And really, that's not a bad thing. It's not the point- to accuse and assign blame. There were very good things about coming in contact with the base elements of human nature. Knowledge is a double-edged sword, no? And yes, it plummeted me out of my own personal little garden of Eden, and into the real world- with very few tools to cope.

But over time, these developed. And in my blackest moments, I can scream and rail inside about how much potential I lost and how much momentum I lost by having to claw myself out of the darkness. That if I hadn't had to suffer all of that I could've been something. But that is empty. Because the reality is that it's totally irrelevant. Theoretical success. Entitlement uber alles. Irrelevant.

It's what I can do now that counts. With the ghosts named, filed away, and in reserve- because those amber memories have a curious strength. It means something to know that I was loved that much. That I was so very safe. That I was so very secure. It is a good starting point. Now that the bitterness has bled away- drop by acid drop. Opening the vein wasn't fun. Painful as hell. But here I am. Feeling clean inside. Ready to go in the back yard in my mind and smell the lilacs. Because in that place, they are always in bloom.