James Bell
Swimming through the waves of my mind.
My phantom love
It has been over two years since she told me it was over.
Letting go of love is like losing a limb, only to be replaced by a phantom.
It has been over two years since she told me it was over and I trusted my thoughtful whispers not to beg her to stay.
Neurons that fire together wire together. Not even time has displaced her cortical map.
Like the lost limb she fires back. Hijacking my dreams to electrify without my conscious suppression.
It has been over two years since I suppressed her from thought and let her be free with her life.
My thoughtful whispers seek to flood the haunted ridges.
In two years I want to be free in love.
Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history. — Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science