Stop Being Haunted

I’ve been thinking about ghosts lately. Not the supernatural creatures we see in horror movies or dress up for Halloween year after year. I’ve been giving thought to the ghosts that follow each person. For me, the ghosts that have followed me doggedly often have to do with loss, trauma, and unresolved grief. The first trauma that became a ghost following me everywhere was the psych hospital. The hospital wasn’t represented in my thoughts or fears as an actual person, just an experience I was desperate not to have again. In my brain, I had lost almost everything when I had gone to the hospital. In reality, I had an excellent opportunity to start over. I was able to find a new career, get my diagnosis, and start healing the wounds that had been festering for years. After a few years of consistently feeling better and handling any suicidal ideation I had with the coping skills, I didn’t fear that anymore.

The grief that lay unresolved inside of me for years, which I have written about on this blog before, was the loss of my family dog. What I haven’t talked about in as much detail is how it affected me from waking to sleeping. I would often have dreams about her. The dreams revolved around her having either died or almost died. My mom would give her a shot that would bring her back to life for another seven or eight years. Even though in my dream I would be relieved she wouldn’t be dead for another several years, even in my dream, I was worried about what we would do in another seven or eight years. I would wake up in the morning feeling sad because she wasn’t really alive. She was still gone. I felt torn because I wanted to read about her so that she felt close to me, but I didn’t want to dream about her because I would be sad and sometimes wake up crying. I thought that holding onto the pain of losing her was keeping her close to me and that if I fully let her go, she would be gone. I was holding her so tightly because I’d already lost so much of her; how would I deal with losing even the pain of losing her that, in my mind, kept her close in the only way I could? What I couldn’t fully comprehend was that I was drowning.  

For most of my life, I have believed that if I keep the grief close and keep reliving the pain of losing something or someone important to me, then I’m not disrespecting the memory of that being or person. If I move on, won’t that mean that what I lost wasn’t necessary to me? I felt this way towards Molly for years. If I let go of the pain of her death, wouldn’t that mean I was forgetting her and that she hadn’t been that important to me after all? I learned I needed to make peace with her death so that I could remember her and honor her properly. I don’t think she would have wanted me drowning in grief, waking up from dreams crying, and unable to think about the positive memories without thinking of her death. She would have wanted me to think about the happy memories and be a force for good in others’ lives as she had been. The irony is that after I wrote a letter to Molly, letting her go, the dreams stopped, and I could remember her freely. I still cry sometimes, but it’s not the painful tears. They are now tears of longing but also gratitude for the time I had with her. 

I encourage anyone who has ghosts of grief regarding anything haunting them to put them to rest; write a letter to the being or person who is haunting you. It could be an event or something that was never a living thing to begin with. Don’t be afraid to let go of pain that no longer serves you. You can still be grateful for what something or someone brought you and not be thinking about it constantly. Staying in the present is the best way to live a good and healthy life. Best of luck with your healing journey!