Ghosts in The Attic

It’s been 4 months since I left to go to Spain. It’s hard to believe time flew that quickly. I’m reminded constantly of time by looking at my daughter; the changes are imperceptible daily but how much they accumulate over time til you realize you have a completely different person standing in front of you.

I look at her and I see me physically but she has her own unique likes and dislikes. A fully fledged teenager now. It seems like such a short time ago that I, too was that age.

Today, we visited a restaurant that I realized I’d been frequenting for 25 years. Back when I was her age. It’s crazy to think about how time has passed me here. The changes I’ve seen in this area this world, myself….

Some things change and some things still have an air of familiarity to them. A nostalgia or comfort. It’s funny to me that the word nostalgia breaks down into pain of home. The idea that thinking back on our past brings pain in that it’s something we can no longer have.

I haven’t learned how to stop feeling the pain of things that are now just memories. 4 months ago, 2 months in Europe seemed like an incredibly long time I was afraid of how I would cope. How my daughter would handle being away.

Now it’s a blip of time. Relegated to deeper and deeper corners of my mind as the tabletop of my brain gets more and more junk put on it; cluttering thought and contentment.

I don’t know how to stop grieving the past. I don’t know how to accept that I’m older now and that the sun is setting on my youth. I don’t know how to stop grieving the loss of innocence of my little girl while simultaneously celebrating her milestones.

I was in the hospital recently, my heart decided it wanted to play its chords out of tune making my ecg look like a fun drawing of mountains and valleys instead of a heart beat. When you have an arrhythmia for me it was PVC’s, it feels like fear. Like when you were a child and you were about to get in trouble. That drop in your chest when you are afraid. It also feels like a fish flopping in your chest in case anyone has felt this but never knew what it was.

They asked me if I was stressed out. I had to admit that even though I am normally high strung, I’ve come off two months in Europe and not having to worry about my soulless job when I came back. My health is doing weird things and that has me stressed, but I’d think I was mess stressed now than I have been in a good decade.

As I lie there listening to the soft ding of my heart monitor telling everyone my heart was being funny again, I thought about how I just can’t imagine a life without stress. When medical professionals tell you to avoid stress I just genuinely think that’s horse shit. But there’s got to be someone out there just unbothered. Like not living in crisis, not feeling exhausted daily from world news, family, community, the division coming between everyone and everything, making every day feels like a perverted version of Groundhog Day, where every day is the same barrage of terrible news and first of its type disasters.

Maybe it’s stepping away from modern life. Maybe it’s tons of therapy. Maybe you can find it in mystical moonlight crystal bowl healing meditation, maybe you can find it in a church, maybe when you leave society.

Maybe contentment is a hard trophy won in life. Not everyone gets to have it. Some people live life with purpose and confidence and some people live life riddled with anxiety and guilt.

I know which one I live currently and I know that I’d like be free for once.