Little Ghosts

by Filomena Acosta

Filomena is a gay Latinx (Chilean with Andean and Mapuche heritage) second-generation immigrant from Canada. Filomena am also disabled, an identity which influenced and contributed to this piece about trauma. Notable writing experience includes Augur Magazine (Issue 4.1) and the CBC Nonfiction Short Story Prize Longlist (2022).

There are many qualities a human heart is made of: blood, veins, muscle, ventricles—but mine is haunted by all my little ghosts.

There may be a different word to describe them. Emotions might be accurate, perhaps memories are precise, and some therapists tell me that “trauma can be a tricky thing to recognise.” As a born and raised Catholic Latina, the most honest thing to say is that I have ghosts inside me.

The first one appears to me after my family shuttles between Canada and the US.

On the playground, I am new and weird. The ghost emerges from the dolls I weave from weeds, alone on the playground after the other children show me what it means to be Canadian Cold. This ghost is small—spreading itself inside me like mould, it flourishes under the grievances of wet, hot tears. This ghost takes to writing on the walls of my brain You Will Never Belong, a scripture I still chant to myself everywhere I go, from Christmas parties to frozen food sections in the grocery store.

During my initial encounter with the ghost, I did not yet understand that something being the first time does not always mean the only time. Instead, you can collect ghosts like email addresses, each one subscribing itself to its own little niche of trauma.

When did I realise that ghosts love company?

Looking back, that knowledge appears at the same time as the second ghost, when I become the sick girl. This ghost does not burst out of me, rather, I am the one who exits my body, watching myself writhe and howl as medical teams hold me down. The ghost claws at my skin, leaving behind itchy, small red dots of blood that stain my collarbone like spittle. Sometimes this apparition surrenders when I break my fever, sometimes it gives me something entirely new.

Being from a superstitious culture, it is easier to talk about the anti-Christ or vengeful ghosts than it is about trauma. After teatime, phantasmal conservations proceed like prayers to a rosary. Without fail, we speak of situations where someone discovers that their house is haunted. Everyone I talk to scoffs when the hypothetical person we create pretends everything is fine.

“They should just leave,” I hear as I break bread, celebrating the communion of unspoken despair. “If I found out my place was haunted, my God, I know I would leave!”

As I sip my tea, I cannot help but find the humour in that statement, because moving is not that simple, right? Even more complex when the plague is in your body. During those declarations, I can peer over their shoulders to find their own ghosts behind them, usually nibbling away at the food. It is only polite that I do not comment on these odd table manners.

I find that to be normal—or rather, accepted as normal—you must pretend, and you must pretend a lot: that everything is fine, that work fulfills you, that you have no needs, that you have dreams only when you sleep. People who stay in their homes, even when doors slam, and knives cut through the kitchen air, they are doing the exact thing society tells them to do.

Remember me? Their ghosts scratch against the inside of their eyeballs, clawing their way out. Stay.

As an adult now, after a long time of pretending and trying to escape, I wonder what to do with this otherworldly problem.

There are no Ghostbusters to vacuum me out; I already tried holy water and sleeping with basil under my pillow at night. I have tried yoga, I have tried going gluten free, I have tried shopping therapy. I have tried eating it away, then starving instead. I have tried sporadic counselling whenever insurance covers it. I have even tried not spending a single moment without consuming something, so I never acknowledge my haunting—still, unholy spirits keep knocking at my door.

Reasonable people say doctors are a good place to start, but they neglect to realise that doctors implant their own little ghost inside me after every visit. There is no magic pill to swallow, to crush, to dissolve under the tongue that can make all my problems truly go away; worse because I am a woman—one that has a vagina, uterus, and a tiny female brain—I won the diagnosis lottery with hysteria. I want to shout Bingo! whenever I hear the roundabout saying, “the mind can make your body do strange things” at my appointments.

“So,” the doctor will begin, not looking at my chart, or me, or the ghosts that are crawling on the ceiling above them. “What seems to be your issue?”

“Well, doctor, I’m not sure,” I reply. What is it about a clinic that makes us unsure? Those stark walls that tell you to go home, the crumpling tissue paper on the patient bench? I attempt at an efficient answer because, after all, it will somehow be my fault for not advocating for myself—pleasantly, of course—in our five-minute slot together. I know I might not get to the flashes in the corner of my eyes, the ongoing six-month headache, the tsunami of nausea, the pain that is only real if the other person believes you. I might not get to them next time, either. I know that. “Not great, I think. I’ve been feeling—”

As I say feeling, I witness the doctor putting hands behind his head, smirking, like he is about to do me a favour instead of his job. I should be happy, I guess, since he is telling me what is inside Pandora’s box just by glance alone.

“Let me guess,” he says, triumphant once more against the hysterical ethnic woman, “you were on your period.”

I wonder if he will say the same thing if I start to float in a crucifix position, turn upside down and have a thousand teeth grow in my mouth like a shark. Instead of jotting down “noncompliant patient”, or “drug seeking behaviour”, or “conversion disorder likely” in my chart, if he sees my possession, will he write the truth of what he hears and sees, then?

How horrible, I think. How magnificent would that be.

I do not want to be this way. People think I joke when I say this. My dark humour is just another quirky trait—that I punchline my way to survival—but I really do mean it. I am a person, and although I have grown to appreciate how the universe is mysterious, in my simple human way, this part of my life is unacceptable.

Like all young women trying to understand the world, I obsess over media in the horror genre. In horror movies, when someone is possessed, one must learn all the names of the demons tainting a soul to perform an exorcism. If you can name them, you can break them.

Some days I try to do this, line my ghosts up one by one, having them hold hands like paper people. I name the familiar ones first: isolation, sickness, spiders, death, anger, parents, school, money, poison ivy, betrayal, police.

The others are harder: I hold their name in my throat, but I am unable to call them. Or I did not know the words to name them. Or I did not have the words at the time, my body only to bear witness, but later will I have a shred of possibility of capturing that moment, that ghost’s silhouette just right.

I feel powerless when the things I squish inside shift through my fingers and explode out of me. As my crust breaks, and I shake like an earthquake, as I pound my legs, desperate to control at least the aftershocks. I cannot look people in the face afterwards. I hardly dare look at myself in a mirror, because it is a ghost that possesses me and—this is not me, is it me, and who am I?

As a child, you conquer. As a teenager, you never want to lose. These days, as I try to fill my body and spirit with medicine, I wonder about the ghosts. Why is it that they exist? What makes a ghost a true ghost?

I am the type of person who depends on stability. I think all things need reassurance, no matter how small. Examples of mine include: the same breakfast, eggs on toast with hummus, every single day for the past six years. Using clothes that my mom bought me in the eighth grade. Snapping spines of the same childhood books during my meals. Looking outside to make sure the sun is still there.

Change isn’t bad, is what I say to people. I am a fast learner who can deal with new situations expertly, I put on my resume. Change is the only thing we can count on happening, I tell myself when everything becomes unbearable.

This time last year, as I lay in my bed during a bout of sick days which turned into months, I read about ghosts. My family being from South America, ghosts are not only nightmare beings—though a priest is on standby just in case—but are also a manifestation of the reality the haunted person lives in. A projection of something that is tangible to someone’s life. The change of everything as we know it. Learning a truth about the world and losing a little sense.

Or is it I learn a truth about myself, and the world loses a little sense?

Ghosts: they are death of some kind, a grief in remembering, of reflecting these open secrets of life. They do not appear; they are born through trauma. The ghosts are real as I am, and I am never alone.

Now, I try to establish a routine in my life that focuses on trauma and recovery. I balance skills like emotional regulation and mindfulness; I am surprised when I do not turn into a pillar of salt when I fail. There are ghosts with me still, but instead of cowering in the corner, I can usually negotiate with them, exchanging windows shattering in my rage to taking walks around the block. When others confront me, amid their own possessions, I try not to judge them as I have before; sometimes, the ghost needs not even understanding, but just acknowledgement that they are there.

I do think about one thing, though.

If I lock myself in the bathroom, turn off the lights and say my name, what will happen?

Who would float to greet me through that closed door?