The movies aren’t exaggerating: when you’re experiencing a haunting, you use every excuse under the sun to reject reality. But at the end of it all, it’s undeniable.
You’ve got a ghost. Simple as that.
I always had some excuse not to write: I had to work on my newsletter. I had to record with a guest or edit an episode. I had to put in my time in Canva to work on graphics only four people would respond to with a single like (and who knows if they weren’t just tapping my post on autopilot).
I was haunted by my burning desire to write.
Still, I denied it, filling my life with other things that sapped my energy. Making it so writing was impossible. It didn’t feel like a distraction at the time, because everything else I did that wasn’t writing was productive. I could reason away why I did x thing instead of y.
My writing why.
I was haunted by the buzzing the whole time, by the whispers of ideas I’d jot down in the middle of the street in my notebook. Never acting on a single one of those eager ideas, telling myself they probably weren’t that important anyway.
You become good at lying by practicing on yourself first.
If you listen closely, you can hear their little wings flapping in my chest. Bashing into my ribcage, trying to escape. Begging for attention and confused as to why they’re still imprisoned beneath flesh and bone.
They felt like butterflies at first, or so I imagined. Lovely, blending into the background for the most part. Perfectly harmless.
I assumed they must be gentle in nature because their temperament remained unchanged for so long.
Never trust the facade.
In recent months, I’ve detected a shift. Small at first, but eventually, their cries began to haunt me daily. Sprouting tiny hands and fingers, they crawled up from their resting place in my sacrum. I can still remember their minuscule digits probing at my fascia, reasoning away that it was nothing more than a lingering memory and back soreness. Eventually, they grew larger and stronger, and in time, advanced to my chest cavity, to my ear canal. The day they took hold in my brain, I was done for.
Here is the perfect conflict for your central character.
It’s time you write your own ghost story for once.
Let. Us. Out.
And that wasn’t all. The visions sharpened in clarity. The characters that once sounded like hollow background noise began taking on distinct voices. Developing flaws. Honing in on a sense of humor that made me laugh to myself, as though reflecting on a charming conversation with a beloved friend.
With my form haunted by these literary specters, I became dangerously close to overflowing. My mind teeming with visions and an all-consuming yearning to put the poetic thinking to page.
It became evident to me I had three options:
1) Get cracked open like a shell, and launch them out in the world. With this option, we run the risk of burdening someone else with such a haunting.
2) I could attempt to eradicate the spirits, purging myself of them by sending the legion back to the void from whence they came. A tempting idea, but I’d spend the rest of my life peering over my shoulder, expecting them to come back in full force.
3) Compromise: learn to co-exist together.
Since you are reading this account, it should be obvious that I chose option three.
Tame the beasts, harness my own strength, make sacrifices.
That is why my podcasting will change (I can handle 1-2 episodes at most per month for the foreseeable future).
This is why I’ll be less “online” (branded content online is nice, but a book is what gets a book deal).
This is why when I do show up for anything that isn’t writing for Resin & Scrawls or my novel, it is going to look and feel different.
The writing is The Work now, and all else is ancillary.
The old me might have apologized for such a shift when many might have been accustomed to - and preferred - the people-pleasing Emmy. The Emmy that only occasionally touches on taboo topics and is wary of injecting an opinion.
Times have changed and this is about survival now. If I don’t want the horde of spirits screeching in my ears, I need to create the quiet conditions for a dialogue. If I’m truly tired of the flashes of ideas dizzying me in the streets, I must carve out the space to ritually release the pressure that’s been built up onto a blank document before me.
If I don’t rinse off the ectoplasm I am drenched in, I might suffocate under the weight of the words that remain unwritten. I can outsource so many things I have physically handled in recent years, but no one else can complete these transmissions from within and beyond but me.
And since the start of our cordial partnership, I am no longer treading water.
This is what it feels like to float.
This is what it feels like to float.