I know I authored a novel about a haunted house, but for me, the ghosts are in my mind. There are some truly terrifying parts of my mind that grab me as I walk past. They began manifesting later in life after I felt like I should be in the most control of my mind but I still found myself hijacked by my impulsivity. I became afraid to exist within my mind as I quarantined off certain aspects of my spirit, deeming them unsafe. Eventually there were more places in my mind I wasn’t willing to inhabit then there were places that were safe.
To say this differently, every time I found a beastly thought, desire, or emotion, I put it in a cage in my mind. Eventually, I had so many cages filled with unspeakable things that I found myself unable to move. In an effort to cage all of the parts of me I found unsuitable, I’d just slowly built a cage around myself.
It was then that I was finally forced to start facing my demons and asking hard questions about where they came from. Through writing, I am able to encapsulate each part of my soul, blessing or beast, and give it a name. One cage in particular, that big, old, battered cage I kept my hatred in, was the most daunting of all. So naturally I wasted a lot of time working on the symptoms caused by that beast and left the cage locked for as long as possible. But, eventually, I opened the door and stood before the snarling daemon of my own bitterness armed with nothing but a pen. At first I pored every syllable it spoke to me onto a page thinking I would just hit ctrl A, delete and move on after but the words didn’t stop. They just flowed like lava from the pit of hell. It formed a scorching river of pain across page after page until I had my first manuscript.
Now I’d love to say that led to an award-winning novel, but it did not. That was a 250,000-word stream of consciousness that does not deserve the light of day, but I do revisit it every now and then to remind me of how far I’ve come.
That’s not to say it was a waste of time though, because the experience was transformative for me. I poured the pain and shame of immense failures and traumas into personified versions of the truth, then I let them prance around unhindered by the sensibilities of polite society until they looked utterly ridiculous. It was like arguing for years with a person that refused to yield. Then one day, just agreeing with them to end the argument only to watch them start disagreeing with themselves, then fall apart without my opposition to prop them up.
Now, fear, resentment, shame, and regret all have a place in my writing but strangely, as I invent justices for the wrongs I’ve faced and evils that I have committed, I’m forced to invent new characters for symmetry. Characters like forgiveness, rejoice, and rebirth.
I’m reminded of a medical patient who suffered so badly from seizures that doctors were forced to find the spot in his brain creating the problems and remove it. They ended up cutting out his hippocampus. That funny seahorse shaped lump of centrally located brain that no one really understood until then. So doctors were astonished when the patient woke up after the surgery acting perfectly normal with the exception of the profound loss of all short term memory. Needless to say his life changed from there and he became a subject of extensive neuropsychological testing. Interestingly, one of the things doctors discovered in the subsequent testing was that, aside from not being able to remember things that happened to him just hours before, he also wasn’t able to imagine what his future would look like. Researchers would ask him what he would do tomorrow to which he would reply, “whatever is beneficial I suppose.” Indicating he was using reasoning that was uninformed by the memory of what the past many days had looked like for him.
I bring that long rambling story up because its meaningful to me. I often spend my time wondering about the role of the hippocampus in memory and its surprising role in imagining the future. It occurs to me that if all of my memories of my history are focused on my failures and the wrongdoings of myself and others, if there is no time spent in reflection of the beauty and positivity in my life that I reason is there but can’t remember, then I guess it isn’t surprising why I struggle to be optimistic about tomorrow. I’ve begun reciting a simple saying to myself and I will share it here in the hopes that it helps even just one person.
The sun never shines on the person who only looks for clouds.
Stupid though it may be, I find it profound and the more I think about it, the more meaning I find in it. I won’t share my conclusions here though. I feel strongly that the discovery of any significance is both our right and responsibility as individuals and I would never intentionally sully that sacred obligation.
Signing off to start the days writing adventures. I will leave you with a tongue in cheek poem of the hippocampus.
Deep in the mind, a seahorse swims,
With twists and turns, on secret whims.
It’s called the hippocampus, you see,
A keeper of the memories.
It catalogs moments, both big and small,
From childhood laughter to life’s great fall.
It stashes away each fleeting thought,
Every lesson learned, every battle fought.
But it’s not just the past it holds so dear,
It shapes the future, far and near.
For without its map, we’re adrift at sea,
With no tomorrow, just endlessly free.
Yet when it falters, life starts to blur,
Moments slip by in a gentle stir.
The seahorse forgets where it’s been before,
And dreams of tomorrow are no more.
So cherish your hippocampus, small and bright,
It guides your days and guards your nights.
A seahorse swimming through life’s stream,
Holding your story, shaping your dream.