Houseguests In My Mind

I am a host to houseguests who visit my mind. They come when they want, stay as long as they want, don't leave when I want them to leave.

The first visitor is Joy. She comes in and is hurt that she feels unwanted, for Joy reminds me of the first years with both men, one of whom was my high school friend who became my (ex)husband. The other was my first grownup lover after my divorce.

With the friend/husband, Joy speaks of how we became more, of the day in the lake when we were teens and we brushed up against one another, and then I leaned on his chest in the hot tub that night as we warmed ourselves after swimming.

With the new ex-lover, Joy spins images in my head of when he carried me in a warm outdoor natural pool under the moon as someone played an instrument that sounded like wind playing against a rocks.

Rage slices at Joy’s visions, tearing them to shreds, angry that this is the trick Joy played, but that it was all an illusion.

Just because the men changed how they felt doesn’t make me an illusion, Joy says. I happened.

Shame chimes up then, in her whispery tone—perhaps you’re the problem, Shame says. Perhaps if you’d been prettier, more giving, done more, been more, they wouldn’t have turned against you.

Rage lifts her flaming head again. Be quiet Rage rages. It wasn’t her fault, this woman that houses us. She did whatever she could.

Meanness sidles up to Shame, and Fear hides behind them, lurking in the shadows. It’s her, they say. Our host. It’s her who is deficient.

Wisdom speaks out then saying what’s the point of all this shaming? How does it help our host?

The professorial voice of Logic drones on in the background saying, how interesting, that these two men exhibited such different manifestations of narcissism that you didn’t recognize it. Let’s analyze their behaviors over and over and over again, seeing each nuance that needs to be explained.

Pain cries out in her guttural voice that rises to a scream. What difference does it make why they did what they did? They hurt her, don’t you see? They hurt her. She’s been drowning in me ever since.

Compassion wafts back and forth amongst them all. Perhaps these men are hurting themselves, she says. Let’s think about what might have made them do these things. Let’s wonder if they were actually good men who regretted what they did.

Rage slashes through Compassion as well—they don’t regret it, she says in a voice hard to dispute. They blame her, over and over, they blame her and they always will.

Compassion says softly, that’s because they can’t look at their own selves.

Logic says, ah yes, this is what you’d call classic projection.

And Pain says, yes, and do you see, it works! Our host absorbs their projections and believes them. Our host feels she is somehow damaged, because why else would these men attack her in the same way, reject her in the same way? Must it not be her fault if it happened to her twice?

Joy sings her little songs saying, remember, remember how happy you were?

And Pain begs her to be quiet. Because Pain is made huge by Joy’s insistence on memory and Rage emerges out of Pain.

These houseguests argue all day long, the walls reverberating with their debating. Every once in a while, some of them will fall asleep and Peace will wander through the briefly quiet rooms saying it’s ok, the house, our host, is still standing, is still moving forward.

Joy will sometimes change her tune and focus not on the past but on a flower, a ray of sun, a butterfly, the bouncing gait of the puppy who bounds here and there, demanding love.

When Joy does that, Pain simmers underneath but quietly. Rage is there but silent, for what can Rage say about a flower, a butterfly, a ray of sun, a puppy?

Acceptance materializes in a ray of light, saying, this is how she shows up. They are who they are and she is who she is. She is meant to be exactly who she is.

Love expands then, and Love, being Love, embraces them all—Pain and her sister sadness, Rage and Joy, Wisdom and Peace. Love bursts outward from the house and takes in the gardens too, the skies, the oceans, and the world and claims it as hers.