Could it be you’re haunted?

This time of year, the past comes back to haunt us.

photograph by Denisa Nistor

This time of year, we face our darkness.

This year, it seems as if I’ve seen more open acknowledgement of the difficulty of the holidays than I ever have before.

And not just acknowledgement but assistance.

Why? Why are the holidays so difficult? Why are they haunted times when we must face our darkness?

Holidays, reunions, family time or the lack thereof: these annual events are soaked with emotion.

They are mingled with joy, grief, longing, shame, frustration, and everything in between.

Every year when the holidays roll around, those emotions rise from the spongy loam of memory like zombies from the grave.

(Everyone’s got to face down the demons)

The holidays’ tendency to trip emotional triggers certainly is not helped by the fact that this time of year has its own vast library of music – and, as I’m sure you’ve experienced at least once in your life, music contains within it an extremely powerful form of time-travel.

Songs are the bookmarks of memory.

Hear one of your musical bookmarks and you are instantly – often intensely – ear-deep in a flood of emotions from the past.

(Case in point: when I was a senior in high school, I heard Paul Simon’s Graceland album for the first time since I was a colicky baby, 17 years before. The music played, the tears ran down my face, and I didn’t even know why.)

Now, don’t laugh, but one of my heftiest emotional bookmarks is the song “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind.

I was 11 years old in 1998 when the single was released. In less than a year, I discovered magick, met my two best friends, and sat in stony silence as my parents announced their divorce.

To this day, when I hear a strained voice singing

I will understand, I will understand, I will understand,

a well-deep streak of grief and compassion for my adolescent self rises in my chest and throat, and tears threaten the corners of my eyes.