A ghost speaks.
Personal trauma has many of us walking around like ghosts. It’s not our fault--hear me--our lives were upended. We were and are forever arrested in the states of our own little deaths, our own traumas. I think a ‘ghost’ is an apt analogy for trauma. Here’s why.
A ghost...
is frozen in the state of his or her own death
is consigned to the replay of all his or her old dramas
haunts the world of waking people who are otherwise happy to be left alone
comes as different sorts of apparitions to different people, but is invisible to most
has no being of himself, or herself, he or she’s no-body, and in this way, he or she is like a reflection of all of the worst fears of any who come in contact with him or with her
is, in nearly every horror film, disturbed by each new young family that moves into that rickety old Victorian mansion and decides to start sprucing the place up
But, perhaps worst of all...
A ghost vanishes when confronted.
That’s what trauma does to a man or to a woman. It’s the little death that leaves us half-living, a death before death. We walk around as these kind of bombed-out shells of our former selfs, while our souls depart us to make camp in our memories.
It’s terribly sad. It’s a dreadful state of being. And, in this state, it’s simply impossible for us to feel whole again. The best a ghost can hope for is not to be returned to the waking world of real men and women, but rather, to be released, to finally be at rest. There’s no going back for a ghost.
Until that day of release, we haunt and we spook and we cause little problems for others like the troublesome poltergeists we are. We’re too ineffectual to do any real damage, so we knock things over, we slam doors, we rattle windows, we scream and cry out, we rattle the chains of our imprisonment in trauma, we moan, we appear where we’re not wanted, we vanish.
If you’ve suffered abuse and live with trauma, this will ring true for you. Doesn’t it feel like no one understands us? Doesn’t it feel like, all it would take is one enterprising young person to go to the public library and research our lives on microfiche, to take the time and put in the work to help us reconnect with what was taken from us, before we can be released? Doesn’t it feel like Groundhog’s Day, like we’re living the same day over and over and over and over until we learn our lesson?
I’m not ready to talk about my own personal trauma, but I’ve been writing about it, and I’ve found the work to be cathartic. One day I’ll be released. Until then, I live as a ghost.
In the Taoist and Buddhist traditions, hungry ghosts inhabit a realm of constant desire, ever longing, ever left wanting, never satisfied. It’s a pitiable purgatory for men and women who, in this life, let their own misdeeds destroy them. People tend to look at those in trauma and ‘blame the victim’ in that way.
Consider the book of Job. His friends saw his suffering, and, what was their response? They began to quarrel with Job: What did you do, one asked, to deserve this? He says, “Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent? Where have the honest been destroyed? In my experience, those who plow injustice and those who sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:7-8 CSB). Victim-blaming.
Another credited what he called Job’s ‘idle talk’ for his misfortunes. When Job defended himself, they said he was full of hot-air, he’s argumentative--they even questioned his devotion to his God.
By the end of the narrative, God himself has a few words for Job’s friends, and gives Job a job: “He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has...my servant Job will pray for you. I will surely accept his prayer and not deal with you as your folly deserves. For you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.’” (Job 42:7-8 CSB).
Jesus echoes this assignment in his Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5, when he says, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Trauma is not your fault, it’s never your fault, but recovery is your responsibility. I know you didn’t ask for that. I didn’t either.
Recovery begins by viewing your own attackers in the light of love. I’ve come to see how those who went after me, those who did irreparable harm to my very person, were simply acting out their own little dramas from their own places of pain. We are all one, and, I’m sure of this: What they did to me, they did to themselves, too. What they did to me had been done to them, too. In this reality of human suffering, no one escapes unscathed. We are all touched by the effects of a kind of curse. So I pray for my enemies, and I work--hard, everyday--to forgive, to empathize, and to minimize my own impact on others.
My work has been an escape for this hungry ghost, and, while I feel I’ll never be whole again, the work has given me purpose.
I’ll leave you with one final thought. I’m told that, on the supposed gravestone of Saint Paul the Apostle, there’s an inscription which reads, “If you die before you die, you will not die when you die.” I’m not sure how true that is but it has stuck with me all these years since my own little death. Christ taught us that unless a seed falls to the ground, is buried in the cold, and dies alone in the dark, it cannot bear fruit.
You might feel the cold of death and the dark of burial under the weight of your own trauma. I assure you, little one, that one day you’ll sprout and begin to grow upwards and toward the sun.