Death Of My Past

She made no introduction of herself. She had creamy brown skin and black eyeliner drawn on dramatically to bring out her gold flecked eyes and black spiked hair. Long black boots with fishnet hose and a black leather jacket.

“In this heat?” I asked her.

“I like things that make me sweat,” she laughed.

“What do I call you?”

“People call me lots of things. It’s what I’m here to do for you, if you’ll let me. You see me as you need to. I have many forms. You call me what you want. But listen to what I have to offer.” She cocked her head to one side, winked, and paused to see if I was listening.

“Go on,” I said.

She stared straight into my eyes — a deep stare that made me feel naked. She said, “I see you.”

“What do you mean?” I shuddered.

“I see it all. I read your last blog. I see your past. I see into what you carry with you every day. What weighs you down. It has ripped your heart open, left scars on your soul, left your back broken, your shoulders tense and bent from all you carry. You still carry it with you. It still defines who you are. Your past is in your present. It fills you so you can’t move on. And you can’t see backwards or forward clearly enough. I’m here to help with that. Aren’t you tired of carrying your hurt around with you?”

“I call them the rocks in my backpack,” I replied. “They’re heavy. I try setting them down, but the memories come back, and my PTSD makes me pick them back up again.”

“Let me help you.”

“How?”

“There are three things to do. First, you are having troubles getting past those bad times. This is going to be hard, but you need to look at your part in it. In each tough time, you were there making decisions, too. You had a part in each of those relationships that went bad. You weren’t just an innocent bystander in your life. You need to stop acting like a victim and see how you played a part in your own story. That’s never easy, but I’m here with you each step. Each time you do it, I do it with you. You’re never alone in this.”

“Isn’t that victim blaming?”

“No. I’m not saying what happened to you was okay, or that anyone had the right to hurt you. I just need you to see how you also hurt yourself. How you also had a part in the story. Not so you can dwell on it. But so we can go to the second step.”

We walked through my past together. Not in a ghost-of-Christmas-past-Ebenezer-Scrooge sort of way, but episodes ran through my mind. I could see what she meant. In my first marriage, he was the one who compulsively lied, so I didn’t know who I married. But I chose to stay with him. He drank behind my back when we were first together, but I developed into an alcoholic, too. He wanted me to do those things in the end just to see my kids, but I didn’t ask too many people for help because I was scared and didn’t want to ask my boss for the money. I agreed to do those things. And my bipolar didn’t make things easy. I worked overnights on a couple jobs, and that spun me into manic episodes where I started doing questionable things no husband should have to put up with. I had a suicidal psychotic episode due to my illness that scared everyone around me. It left me hospitalized, unable to function. He didn’t know how to deal with that. When I was getting sober, it put me into another psychotic mixed episode that put him over the edge of tolerance. I was not a stable spouse.

In my second marriage, I ignored the red flags, continuing on in the relationship as if they would fix themselves. He did change personalities overnight when we moved in and got scarier when we were married, when his abuse escalated, but there were early red flags that I turned a blind eye to, hoping they were minor problems that would work themselves out. A person’s history tends to demonstrate their intentions, and I should have listened to my misgivings before dismissing them. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own, or that I wouldn’t find someone else. I thought I needed someone, and that anyone was better than being on my own. That simply wasn’t true. I am a capable person, and more independent than I let my fearful self believe.

“This won’t happen overnight. But it will happen. Can you see where you were both a victim and a player in your own life? Are you ready for the second part?” She asked.

“I’m ready. What do I do next?” I responded.

“After you’ve accepted your past for what it is — accepted your part in it, accepted that it happened and you can’t change it, accepted that you can’t change the people in your past — it’s time to take the rocks out of your backpack. You need to stop carrying it around with you.”

“I’ve tried that. I’ve tried leaving it on the side of the road, but I end up picking them back up. How do I do it?” I asked.

“Give them to me. I can take them away from you. I can carry them for you.”

“How can you handle that? Who are you?”

“Don’t worry about it. I can handle more than you believe. I can take your pain away.”

“What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch. I’m here to help. So let me help.”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t imagine not carrying this pain around with me. My eyes sprung wide open. “What if I feel the pain coming back? What if a memory causes me to get scared, or puts me back to a moment in my past and I feel stuck?”

“I’ll come back, and you can give it back to be all over again. I’ll always be here so you can know I’m carrying this instead of you. You’re not alone. You don’t have to take the pain anymore. Let me have it.”

“Okay,” I said. I closed my eyes again.

Then there was this lifting. A lightening. The memories weren’t gone, but they were more distant. My walls seemed like small fences, light boundaries rather than insurmountable rock monstrosities. I could feel the breeze for the first time standing in the middle of my mind.

“Ready for the last step?” she asked.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now you look back and remember that there were good times. The rocks aren’t in the way, so you can see the good times you had. They may taste bittersweet sometimes, but they will be good memories. Hold on to those. But don’t live there. Turn around.”

“What do you mean?”

“I took your past pain so you could look forward more than you look back. Now you can journey without the past weighing on you, but don’t live in the past. It’s dead. It’s gone. See that you have so much ahead of you. And if you ever need me, I’ll be here again.”

“How do I ever thank you? Why did you do this?”

“Thank me by living your life forward, kindly, and well. I do this because it’s my thing. It’s what I’m here for.” She cocked her head to the side again, winked, and was gone.

And so was my wall, and my rocks, and my pain.

Now when I see someone in long boots, fishnet hose, and a leather jacket, I’ll think of her…and smile.

8–14–21

Tansy Julie Soaring Eagle Paschold