Old haunts and future ghosts

Reckoning, integrating, futuring, fumbling.

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Photo by Elliott Blair on Unsplash

After so, so long (you know how long) pining for music and dancing and conversations with friends over the din of crowded rooms, and so, so many staring-at-the-ceiling nights spent ruing invitations I’d declined in those last months leading up to lockdown, suddenly, my social life is alive, overactive, abuzz, and it’s like I’m in my twenties again: FOMO on full blast, unable to let even the stupidest of events pass me by, a bodily desire to be out out out in the world, always, eating up experiences, that anything could happen antenna on alert, curious, floating just over my head, that make-believe appendage that has me overriding my late-thirties/neverending pandemic penchant for spending a not-insignificant amount of time supine on my couch, and instead has damn near every evening and weekend booked out weeks in advance. And yes, it is breathless, but also, it is presence, what a gift, this newfound inability to take any of this the least bit for granted.

On Friday night I picked up three friends and we zipped down to Folsom and 19th to attend a friend’s birthday at Homestead. This bar predates the 1906 earthquake and is like so many other bars in San Francisco: on the dive-y-er side, peanut shells on the ground, a black-and-white image hanging on the wall of a bunch of gristled, Gold Rush era men posing sternly out front of its original iteration.

It also turns out that for nine years I lived within walking distance of this bar, an old haunt I hadn’t been to since my wilder days.

So I walk in and the sun is still out, and everything looks a bit shabbier and sadder, including the people hanging out in their beards and flannel, and I order a soda water with bitters because the only N/A option they have is ginger beer (too sweet) and one N/A beer, which, meh, not my thing, and I’m awkwardly stepping on said peanut shells when I look up and standing at the back of the bar is a dude I dated fifteen years ago and the first thing that runs through my mind is I suppose it makes sense that I’d see a ghost at an old haunt, and this is a lie, this erudite little phrase didn’t come until later, the truth is I looked up and saw him and thought are you fucking kidding me, and then I proceeded to flit and buzz around and avoid eye contact the rest of the evening.

We call places we frequent “haunts,” and I always assumed that this was a comparison to the behavior of ghosts. But it so happens that describing a frequently attended location as a “haunt” predates its association with ghosts—this came later (at least according to my twelve second perusal of the term on etymology.com). So, as it turns out, ghosts adopted their behavior from us.

And this makes sense to me now, a few days later, reflecting back on hanging out in an old space that was both familiar and new, being both present with my people, ebullient and joyful, while at the same time sensing Gmork Dani in the shadows on the wall, seeing her there, creeping through the wallpaper not unlike the specter that beckons to Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper (forgive me this particularly extra aside, but if you haven’t read this short story, omg, get on it, that shit is scary, not to mention brilliant); remembering the many many nights of being out in my vampire suit and going into a bar bathroom, first moment of quiet all night, and it only hitting me then how drunk I actually was, how up to that moment I thought I had myself together.

I was so afraid of this part of myself for so long, felt at her mercy, and the recent work has been to love this ghost version, to give my dark side attention and space to express herself, because thinking I could cut some parts of myself off kept me fucked up for a long time. I no longer feel fucked up. Now, it’s a more humble walking through the world, a knowing that I am not actually special at all, and I can watch myself both present and laughing and so fucking overjoyed to be shooting the shit amongst people I love, all the while bearing witness to the ghost version standing there confused, trembling. Lurking.

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There’s a sort of typical trajectory to early sobriety. An urgency of is this actually happening, is this going to be my life now, and so many firsts that aren’t really firsts, but returns—first time attending a wedding; first holiday season; first time on a plane, in an airport; first sober sex; first time losing a loved one; first pandemic. There’s the delight of starting new habits, and not only starting them, but having them stick: hot lemon water first thing in the morning; maybe some kind of contemplative practice; the development of self-compassion and the subsequent and incredibly liberating reduction of shame; building community, on and on. And then, at some inevitable point, the pink cloud evaporates, the novelty wears off, and we’re left with the “now what?” The ghosts shiver and whisper. A new future beckons.

The thing that I’m curious about in the recovery space more than anything else these days is what the ongoing looks like. What does this <gestures wildly> look like, long term, over time? What do we talk about, deepen into, after the initial spark and drama of the final quitting? I’m almost five years into this practice and what is it? Is what I’m doing now even recovery, or is this just what being an adult is?

I write and talk and think about practice a lot, and I know that it’s something I have to fall in love with, obsess myself with, even, if this—this commitment to becoming responsible—is going to be sustainable, and not only sustainable, but motivating, because how else can I make “taking responsibility” something alluring, and not the most boring concept imaginable?

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There was a payoff to the story of being fucked-up. As long as I lived inside that story, life would remain small. There is safety in a small story. Even at my most miserable and confused, I mostly knew what to expect, and that knowing had me feel safe. It wasn’t until I released the story (I am still releasing the story) that the work began, which is of course the part where I took (am taking) responsibility for it all.

So yes: part of the ongoing is a reckoning with ghosts. But my experience this past Friday night reminds me that future ghosts exist in tandem with past ones.

Up until fairly recently, I couldn’t even imagine thinking about my future. Getting to project forward onto future ghosts is a privilege I am down-in-the-dirt-grateful for every every day. Fifteen years ago I was spending too much time in dive bars, dating men who treated me like I was disposable, and though 38-year-old me no longer cringes at these memories, and can actually send 22-year-old-me (pobrecita) love and care and tenderness and compassion and that big one, forgiveness, it’s also true that I don’t want to look back fifteen years from now feeling sad for the who I am today.

In fifteen years, I’ll be 53, god willing. I hope by then, I’ll have let the past rest. Instead of wrestling ghosts, I’ll look back and remember the feeling of standing there in that shitty bar with a sun in my chest, laughing with people I can’t believe are my friends, eating cold nachos, the look on my friend’s face as we sang him happy birthday.

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SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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