My Ghost

It took years to get here. And a lot of thinking, stumbling, and getting up again. I don’t know if I’ve ever known myself to be a woods person, but I honestly don’t know what I could’ve done without the McKintosh Trail in K’jipuktuk. The leaves today had more red in them, the stubborn vegetation leaning into the new season and finally giving in to the inevitable cycle of change. Fall. It’s a sad season for me; reminds me of my birth and the death of romances. To me, September has always symbolized a certain end to possibilities. As a child, I’d hate the end of summer vacation - a time when I’d have to go back to Dubai for school and leave Cairo behind. To my childhood and teen self, Cairo was the pinnacle of all meaning, where things and characters and drama got created. Dubai was small and unassuming, no matter how prettier and cleaner it was. 

The connection with the family, the land, and the existential roots during the summer was what I lived for during the school year in Dubai. The extended family, the heated debates between the uncles, the smell of my grammy’s clothes, her bickering with grandpa, all the sounds of the street vendors, all the honking horns. The jokes. The cussing. The heat. The dust! No world was worth living in, no matter how safer and more comfortable, if it existed outside of Cairo. Leaving all that and traveling back to the “safe” city of Dubai in September was a death of the soul. 

My parents never really told me directly that all we could ever be in Dubai were temporary residents, but I knew from snippets of overheard conversation between them in my early childhood, as well as from later conversations with my school friends, that all “expats” were by default “temporary.” There’s a reason that I couldn’t quite remember the majority of my childhood in Dubai; it all felt temporary while I was living it. A feeling that I now understand much better - I couldn’t let myself belong there if my connection to the land was fleeting. It was a strong fear to connect fully with the place and then lose, literally, the ground from beneath me. So I didn’t. But herein lies a problem: Dubai made me, just as Cairo did, and not remembering enough of what made me is disconcerting. 

On the MacKintosh trail today I remembered what my therapist told me yesterday. I may have inwardly smiled because I think I finally am on the road to heal from an early childhood wound. A hole I have carried inside me since the age that I do remember from my time in Dubai. I was only nine when I first felt the pangs of acute depression: despair, hopelessness, being alone in the world, unexplained tears, and a general feeling that the world is doomed. Understanding now that I was suffering from depression in those early days took quite a bit of determination in the last four years or so. Of all the things that immigration can be thanked for, knowing yourself is probably my favorite. And then again, the pandemic’s work from home policy gave me all the time to do it. 

So, I’ve been meeting my childhood ghost in the woods for some time now. At first, I couldn’t make out its face or exact shape. It just lingered there with me - a strongly felt presence that was distant and quiet. 

“Who are you?” I’d ask. “Show yourself, please” 

Followed quickly by, “Wait! I’m not ready yet. Come by when I’m ready.”

There was no doubt in my mind that it knew me inside out, that it would know the exact moment that I’m ready to meet it fully, to see its exact features. Maybe shake its hands, if it had any. A hug? Maybe. In due time, for sure. 

But I was getting itchy for more contact. And my summer had been pulling me in all sorts of directions, the most important of which all wrong and unbelievably painful. I’d feel the ghost looking on and shaking its head: “Why hurt yourself, child? You’d forget my real face and go for a stupid fantasy?” Other times though, the ghost would be all kind, “You’re not alone, kid. I’m here for you when you’re ready to come home.” Yes, my ghost could smile. 

Yesterday I saw my ghost for the first time. Turned out to be a she. And she was me. A child of 6, 9, 17, and a woman of 27, 35, and 39. And as I grew, Abandonment grew with me; a child within a woman, always there, always waiting to be acknowledged. 

“It was always your theme,” my kind therapist said yesterday about Abandonment, right after I saw my ghost for the first time. The moment was shockingly painful but cathartic. It was astounding to come face to face with my abandoned self. I finally saw her. 

“Why did you send him that last message, when you knew he wouldn’t respond or even read it?” asked my therapist. 

“Because I love him,” I feebly answered.

“Yet you know he’s not there to receive that gift. Sometimes we send things to other people that we wish we could give ourselves. Really think about why you sent him that gift.”

After a heavy pause, I said, “I guess I was…” the tears started rolling, “I guess I was trying to tell myself that I’m okay…that I wasn’t abandoned.” I was crying big fat tears by then. That ghost was full on in my face now, right there with me, with big, sad eyes and so much heart. I blew my nose, looked at my therapist and said, “I think I’ve been trying to change that narrative all my life, and I’m trying SO hard to tell myself that he did not abandon me. That’s why I sent him that message,” I was choking on my tears.

Abandonment is the child inside me that never healed. She never really grew either. Every time I’ve been presented with the possibility of romance by someone who vaguely represents kindness and care, she’s latched on for dear life with the urgency of a lost child. My reason, my practicality, and all my wisdom go out the window at the possibility of love. I want to believe that love exists so much that I see it where it isn’t there. It truly is all I ever wanted: love and care. 

As sad as all this sounds, this is however a story of hope. Through the pain comes the gift of healing. As Jalaluddin Al Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” I needed to know where the wound even was. I had no idea what my ghost looked like or why she existed, but now I do. She came into focus so sharply that it was almost unthinkable that we’d never consciously met before yesterday. All she wanted was acknowledgement. The road towards healing may be long or take the rest of my life, but seeing where I need to start is refreshing. I understand precisely why I felt so traumatized when he left the way he did. It's not that the relationship ended, because I always knew it would. It’s the unkind abruptness that he did it with, like he was holding me one minute then let me fall the next. The 180 degree shift. The coming out of left field. That’s the trigger, the pain point: the shockingly cold, complete, sudden absence that leaves me wondering if anything was real or if I even existed to him. I get reduced to that 6 year old abandoned child who once again wants to know, “Am I invisible?” 

The red leaves on the trail today reminded me of my September period. It was the heaviest and longest I’ve had in recent memory. It came about 10 days after the breakup. I was reminded of something my therapist always says, “Trauma lives in the body.” I believe that; when he sent me that last text where he ended things suddenly, I felt like my uterus was being punched. I remember thinking that it was weird - why my uterus? It was the first time that I’d felt that way in my body about a breakup. Like something was gutting me in the most private, most anti-feminine way possible. A loss of love and womanhood. Now I know that Abandonment had shifted her weight to rest where it mattered most to me at the time, calling my attention to the place in my body where I needed to let the Light enter me. 

“You have a strong pattern,” my therapist told me yesterday, “if there’s one thing I can count on with you, it’s that you get out. You leave what does not work for you. I know you got this,” she smiled with confidence. Between her confidence, myself, and my ghost, I have to believe I got this. 

And Abandonment, I see you now, sweetie, it’s okay. Thank you, I got the message at last. 

I also got you.