Banish My Birthday Ghosts
Voices from my past that are echoing loudly recently
It is inevitable that when you have a birthday on a holiday it is more difficult to forget.
I am using this line of reasoning to explain why past friends/lovers have re-emerged to insert themselves in my life in strange ways.
It is not the luck of the Irish, but a weird curse in the days leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, my birthday.
The bogeymen have come a callin’ : the first was in the form of a scary, conservative bigot reciting a poem, and the other, a personalized trauma dump.
The former came via a YouTube share, and the latter in a direct message.
Both were inappropriate and not coincidentally meant to trigger some response from me. I don’t know why because these connections were severed many years ago, particularly the former.
These ghosts from my past are not fun to confront in the lightness of my present being. I did not want to acknowledge them, and yet , they have lingered heavily in my psyche. I am left feeling wobbly in thought and spirit.
Maybe it is not so unusual for March 17 after all. The day is synonomus with all things Irish and Ireland is known for tales of fairies, leprechauns, banshees (a portent of death, not a ghost) and other supernatural creatures.
My ghosts, unfortunately, do not have the same slick history. They are unremarkable.
Fellow Medium writer Christina Care wrote a great piece about being haunted by memories. I am not. I own my associations because, at the time, they served a purpose. I have grown and moved on. Forgotten.
Life, I have learned painfully, must be lived in the present. (Granted, it is easy to cling and to ruminate. I did that way too long.)
Both of these ghosts tried to make me into someone they wanted to remember me as. I do not share the opinions or preoccupations of these men. That is primarily why the friendships ended, or more aptly disintegrated.
Why did they think they could suck me back in?
Relationship experts and psychologists alike say you must “prepare to cut all ties.” It is necessary because the “peek-a-boo, I see you,” method every few weeks or months is useless.
The spell has been broken.
If they could have conjured up innovative ways to slip back to my life, and honored who I am today, then our past could have been the basis for a new present.
Instead, I am enjoying my pot of gold at the end of my own rainbow.
Apparitions be gone……
