Haunted by My Past
Advice for Intimacy
Dear lithium,
For many years now I’ve been coming to terms with some significant harm I’ve caused others in my life when I was younger. I won’t go into the details of this harm, but suffice it to say I am deeply haunted by my past actions.
I have spent the last number of years in therapy making steps towards meaningful changes. Despite this I have never found true spiritual ‘peace’ in myself due to my past. Beyond atonement, how can I forge more meaning in my life? I know it’s nothing so simple, and I will always carry the weight of my actions, but I often feel as if I am missing ‘something’
Dear Haunted,
You may always carry this weight. One day you may be able to put it down, but the future is always unknown.
So you wake up in the morning. It’s time to put on the 30lb backpack of your past actions. It’s time to get dressed. Have some toast. If you’re British I suppose you could have some beans with it? Your backpack is on. You’re out the door and off to work. Everything is more difficult because you have 30lbs on your back. But your can still say hi to the neighbor grabbing her mail. You can still slip $10 to the guy sitting on the sidewalk. He says he’s gonna get a beer. It’s 8:30am. Nice. You’re not even halfway to work and the backpack is so heavy that you’re struggling to keep it together. You slip into an alley. You sit down. You’re allowed to cry, Haunted, you’re allowed to wail.
Sidebar. Some people struggle to cry. If this is you my suggestion is to just fake it. Make the gestures and the facial expressions and the noises and the shivering. Rock back and forth. Not gonna lie, do this enough times and the body starts to get the idea that this is an okay thing to do. We are complex creatures and we can actually just take these types of cues from ourselves. So cry.
You wail. You stand up and you notice the backpack feels just a little bit lighter. You pass a preacher man on the sidewalk and he startles you when he says you’re going to hell. You notice the backpack is back at full weight.
Your day goes on like this. You go through the motions. You feel the weight.
You said in your letter, Haunted, that you’re missing something. It sounds like you’re in a lot of pain. Maybe, and I could be wrong, you’re holding the backpack at arms length. You’re trying to get rid of it.
Get some cool pins for your backpack. You don’t have to be proud of it but if you have regret for your actions, which it sounds like you do, then I would suggest that it is literally your responsibility to own this backpack. I’m not saying that you have to really do anything involving other people. But this backpack has to become your friend.
It’s like Dragonball when they put on the weighted backpacks to train. This is you. Time to train. Time to get stronger. You can do this by acknowledging this thing is firmly on you. Talk to your regret. Don’t curse it or yourself out. Maybe it’s here to teach you or to tell you something. Talk to that. Build rapport.
How does your relationship to the backpack change how you’re able to interact with the world? I imagine the backpack makes it harder to forge relationship. Makes it harder to do all sorts of things. I’m sorry if you haven’t seen Dragonball but in my mind it’s like that, except you’re training yourself to have the life you want. Just on hard mode.
One day the load might get lighter. Life will get easier. Your training will have paid off. You’ll be stronger.
Build these connections within yourself. Understand your demons. Why they happened. Why they won’t happen again.
In Dragonball, when they finally take the backpacks off they could lowkey fly. That might not be your trajectory. I don’t know. But what I do know is that you can forge an intimate relationship with yourself and your pain. You can (learn to) cry. It’s okay to cry for this one. It really is.
A final little note. You mention finding peace. In my experience, peace is not an absence of negative emotions or happenings. The worlds on fire for fucks sake. We don’t exile all the bad things so that finally, peace is all the remains. To me, peace is larger than that. It can encompass all the bad. My theory is that is you’re able to hug your backpack close to your chest and to love it, to truly love your pain, then you can seek peace. Feel all your shit and open your arms wide and embrace the world as you breathe deep and slow.
Once a woman on a meditation retreat was sobbing while trying to meditate. The great master, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche approached her and said “not only in crisis; it is always like this.”
with love,
lithium
PS self analysis fails in the face of true feeling. true feeling breaks into a thousand pieces in the face of the divine.