NOTE: the following contains spoilers for the Netflix show The Haunting of Bly Manor. If you are watching or plan to, I suggest keeping this piece tucked away for when you’ve finished the series. If you know you won’t watch, feel free to read on!
Halloween has just passed, but I’m still thinking about ghosts. The things that come back when you thought they were gone. The things that drift just beneath the surface or in the corner of your vision, until you blink and suddenly they have you by the throat.
What I am trying to say is, the pain came back.
Came back? I hear you echo. Didn’t you say it never really leaves? I suppose I did, and I thought it didn’t. I don’t have all the answers. Something happened over the summer: I went weeks without a twinge, able to sit and walk and lie down as I pleased. (The simplest of pleasures, being able to move the way you want to.) I realize now I was lucky, for it to stay away so long. But it came back.
Armed with a heat pad, I watched The Haunting of Bly Manor in the span of a week in October. Its titular spirit takes the same path each night through the manor: up the stairs, into the forbidden wing, down the stairs, leaving muddy footprints. A couple of times, a human is unlucky enough to stumble into her way and she grabs them by the throat, dragging them in her unforgiving grip as she walks. The pain feels a lot like that, an iron clutch: I writhe and gag under its fingers, but it continues on its unchanging track.
And the pain isn’t my only ghost these days. Like many people in this country, I’ve spent the last few weeks looking up voting restrictions, donating, sharing election resources, and generally dreading that the sky will fall. The difference between the election season four years ago and this one is palpable. 2016 felt like a car crash no one saw coming; 2020 feels like strapping on armor and waiting for the first explosion. Where the ghosts of Bly Manor are in large part only visible to the two children who live there, this is a ghost visible to everyone, walking unabashed among the living.
These specters follow me (or am I the one shadowing them?), waiting for me to slip up. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. Like the eerie quiet before the high scream, breath stuck in the ribcage.
In ghost movies, there’s always a scene where a brave human has resolved to evict the offending spirit once and for all. They gather knowledge and materials, arm themselves, and wait, jaw muscles jumping, for some inevitable confrontation.
Waist-deep in a flare, it took me nearly the whole month to realize October marked my “painversary,” as I’ve come to call it. A year since the pain dug its way in, the hysterical meltdowns, the ER visits. Strange, the timing of its return, I thought; as if it wanted a birthday party. I feel ghosts of that first time everywhere: the falling leaves, the sleeplessness, the constancy of heat pads and side effects. But I’ve had five MRIs, seen half a dozen specialists. I’ve ruled out a lot of things. I have ways to cope, even if they don’t get rid of the pain completely. I don’t have a name for it yet, but I know what it isn’t — which is more of a relief than it sounds like. I have come prepared.
I feel the same determination shivering in the air as we wait for the results of this election. In a presidential term, we have learnt a lot about the body politic: which parts — which of its people — hurt the most brutally, what is just not working in managing its ailments, how we might approach the same problems in new ways. Community care, active anti-racist actions, and maybe most basically, paying attention. We have come prepared, this time.
And yet for all this preparation, I’m learning that exorcising what haunts us doesn’t usually happen in one climactic battle scene. I’m learning that what’s important above all else — and admittedly, what I have to work at most — is consistency. Taking my meds not just on the worst days, because they’re made to control the pain over time. Researching and supporting local government, which handles so many aspects of daily life. Moving my body, because immobility will set my spine burning. Keeping awareness on my daily actions and biases, like an ice pack on an aching joint, to minimize the harm.
Strength in numbers doesn’t just mean the number of people, but the number of actions. These actions might be small, but they build up over time. They are their own kind of protection, stronger and more lasting than any one ballot or bucket of salt. Because the ghosts we deal with in our daily lives don’t just evaporate, do they?
Toward the end of Bly Manor, one of the characters invites the main ghost into her own body, to save the others. I expected her to writhe violently before giving way to the spirit, but she stayed herself, breathless. The only mark of her sacrifice was that one of her blue eyes turned brown. Later, asked how she feels, she says, “It’s so quiet in here, but... I know there’s this thing... hidden. This angry, empty, lonely beast. It’s watching me. Matching my movements. It’s just out of sight, but I know it’s there. And it’s waiting.”
I feel like that about my pain, waiting to flare and knock me breathless. I feel like that about this country, the cruel processes that continue on their path, strangling anyone who crosses them. But I know more about them now, and more about myself. As satisfying as it would be to end on dramatically casting out the ghost, the truth is that there’s never just one, and it’s never that simple. So I do the small things, and when I forget or neglect to do them, I forgive myself, and then I do them again. And again.
Maybe the ghosts never do go away. They rise slowly to the surface, fight us and we them, and sink back below. But maybe that’s just how it works — in cycles, seasons. In doing the small things over and over, the things that keep us standing among the living. Maybe the ghosts don’t leave us — we just learn to live with them.
Parting notes—
An exercise in consistency: on the music side, I’m doing a slightly insane thing where I’m writing one song every day of November. You can follow along to hear pieces every day on either Instagram or Tiktok!
How to be an anti-racist ally for the long term (Sophie Williams)
What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic (Jia Tolentino)
