Painting by author
You can run, but someday you will have to slow down. And what if what chases you doesn’t?
I was never one to run away from a fight. Once I got out of that house, I never backed down or yielded to a challenge. They were “gauntlets thrown down,” and it was my ethic to always pick up the gauntlet and fight back. At least with concrete things like confronting my father. Protecting my son. Learning the “next thing” I needed to, so I could live a healthy, useful life.
At that point, it was the right thing to operate from a place of “keep going and tough it out, because others need you.” It was the truth. You don’t stop to examine “within” when you are fighting external battles.
And society encourages that too, with its spoken or unspoken, but expected rule: Move on. Get over it. Leave it behind. It’s better now, so why dwell on the past? Sometimes society can be downright cruel and tell you that to revisit the past wounds is just indulgence or navel-gazing. But regardless, for those times, I did what I needed to when it mattered. And I am satisfied with that.
But after Mom died, and the emotional roller-coaster that followed, I realized there finally comes a day when there are no more “priorities” in line ahead of you, and life is asking, “Are you ready to face yourself?”
All of these emotions had come up in me, seemingly out of nowhere, but they had obviously been somewhere in me. And they had been waiting a lifetime for me to stop long enough to listen to them. They were things I hadn’t been ready to feel, things that had to wait until the time was finally right…like now. They had something to tell me. Would I have the courage to listen?
What happens when you can no longer delay the inevitable? What is your answer to your inner self when it shows up on the doorstep of your psyche and demands to be heard?
It’s terrifying for sure…those “moments of truth” when they confront you. It’s tempting to want to just keep on operating the same way you always have. I did not want to yield. And then there is that “life weariness” that says: “Haven’t I worked hard enough already? When is enough, enough?”
But those ghosts… they were gaining on me, and I was slowing down. Threats you don’t stop to face grow, looming over you with longer shadows, and real or imagined, swelling in power.
I said above that I was never one to run away from a fight all my life. But I had to accept that if I didn’t stop now and listen, that *would* be running away. And I was only kidding myself if I thought that ignored threats were just passive things in your psyche.
The reality is, ghosts aren’t quiet…or kind.
Soul Mosaic 
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