Awake Chasing Ghosts
"...Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna wear them rattlin' chains. But when I go to sleep at night, Don't you call my name..."
Gillian Welch's song Caleb Meyer is sponsoring my insomnia. Would that I were able to vanquish my ghosts with a simple imperative as she does. Instead, the ghosts in my past insist on whispering my name so I wrestle a while longer, captive to their desire to resurrect.
Do your ghosts haunt as mine? Surely I am not alone in my haunting.
I believe the impetus for their current presence is my impending fortieth birthday. I find taking stock of my life only strengthens chain's rattle. How I long for the dulcet tones of contentment and the peace of having given up my ghosts.
As a result of believing in the traditional two-parent household, a failed marriage and other failed romantic relationships, I do not have children. Time marches on and its footprints are ever present in the scars in my heart. I thought I would have a family of my own... it never occurred to me I would have to release this dream or that it would be so difficult. My attempts at exorcism have left me weary.
The benchmarks others have reached and the requisite milestones others seem to acquire and attain with grace have eluded me. The pithy statement "It's not you, it's me" is actually true this time as I am the only common denominator of my shortcomings. Ghosts of the "road not taken" are all around. "What if..." "Perhaps I should have..." "If I'd only said Yes instead of No...." "If I'd only said No instead of Yes..." It's an exhausting little game I do not recommend and yet I cannot stop myself from playing.
At this moment I cannot keep the tears from falling. I carry this darkened depression and these ghosts around as an Albatross when I long to be a Phoenix.
Gillian Welch's song Caleb Meyer is sponsoring my insomnia. Would that I were able to vanquish my ghosts with a simple imperative as she does. Instead, the ghosts in my past insist on whispering my name so I wrestle a while longer, captive to their desire to resurrect.
Do your ghosts haunt as mine? Surely I am not alone in my haunting.
I believe the impetus for their current presence is my impending fortieth birthday. I find taking stock of my life only strengthens chain's rattle. How I long for the dulcet tones of contentment and the peace of having given up my ghosts.
As a result of believing in the traditional two-parent household, a failed marriage and other failed romantic relationships, I do not have children. Time marches on and its footprints are ever present in the scars in my heart. I thought I would have a family of my own... it never occurred to me I would have to release this dream or that it would be so difficult. My attempts at exorcism have left me weary.
The benchmarks others have reached and the requisite milestones others seem to acquire and attain with grace have eluded me. The pithy statement "It's not you, it's me" is actually true this time as I am the only common denominator of my shortcomings. Ghosts of the "road not taken" are all around. "What if..." "Perhaps I should have..." "If I'd only said Yes instead of No...." "If I'd only said No instead of Yes..." It's an exhausting little game I do not recommend and yet I cannot stop myself from playing.
At this moment I cannot keep the tears from falling. I carry this darkened depression and these ghosts around as an Albatross when I long to be a Phoenix.
posted by Ephemeral | 4:39 AM
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