(For this week’s post, I’m reposting an Instagram post from 2022. Apparently, I talk about exorcisms at this time of year.)
When I was young, I went to Catholic school. Once a year, the priest would come into our classroom and answer any of our questions about the church. But we were in junior high, so we only wanted to hear about one thing: exorcisms.
How many have you done? What happened?
I remember him being forthright but not too detailed. Except once.
He told us a story about how he was called out to a hospital for an exorcism when he was a much younger priest. He had the directions and pulled up to the front of the building. But try as he might, he could not find the door.
He drove around and around and around, but the door was missing. Hidden.
My memory fills in the gap and says that he eventually got in after prayers or holy water, but I can’t remember if that’s what he said.
The devil didn’t want him to find what had been hidden.
A powerful act of disappearing away.
Desired.
Taken.
***
I wrestle with my own mind these days. I seem to be spending hours distracting myself. Every time I start to ask myself what is going on, my mind hops to a shopping list, to the smoothie I made for breakfast, to how many miles I need to run this Sunday, to everything but the thing/memory/feeling that possesses me right now.
Driving in circles.
I am stalking myself, it seems. But I am very good at hiding away. I am quite talented at distracting and putting the door just out of reach.
I get close enough to know there is a door. There is a feeling. There is something.
But.
There is an incantation that is looking to roll across my lips.
A holy water that swells from my internal tides.
The spell that has been ready to unfold.
***
I believe you take the power away from trouble when you name it. When you point it out in the shadows.
I see that something wants to stay hidden. Unresolved. Unhealed.
I can smell it. I can know it in the ripples and the movement of leaves. I continue to run toward it, even as all the doors run just a little more quickly. Like a race. Inside.
I am coming to help, I insist.
But it’s not sure yet.
I’ve said it all before.