Everyone wanted to know how my hypnotherapy session went, including me. It took a while to relax because I’d hurried there from work and had to rub my eyes to make the GANTT charts go away. But when the meditation music started and we dimmed the lights, after I’d taken my shoes off and put my feet up, my body faded to nothing, leaving only my lips.

I thought about recording it on my phone in case I couldn’t remember what I said but none of that is true, you’re aware the whole time. I went back to the apartment where I grew up and imagined the hallway leading to my bedroom. I tried to picture a younger version of myself guiding me there but it was hard, imagining your inner child. Mine was a version I’d seen in pictures, and I did my best to animate him. More important were the feelings emanating in that scene: my counselor was trying to help me re-wire what went wrong.

I didn’t want to leave, though it was abstract and strange. I just hadn’t relaxed like that in a while. I brought the younger version of me back home, and let him wander around the yard. And then I couldn’t help co-mingling him with our kids and tried to introduce them, but soon it was time to go, my session was up.

When I left I couldn’t find my phone; I checked both pockets, my jacket, and thought I’d left it inside—but it was right there in my hand. And when I got home I just sat on the sofa while Dawn warmed dinner, feeling like I’d just traveled through time, feeling charmed.

I’d gone back to my old office earlier in the day too, the first time since January, and like going back to a childhood place, everything seemed smaller. I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore, and left through the back door.

These blog posts are a form of hello and goodbye too, looking back on my life from different points in time, the same as a photo or an old place you knew, what small parts of yourself still remain true.

Categories: identity, Memoir, writing

Tags: aging, creative nonfiction, humor, hypnotherapy, mid-life crisis, William Pearse writer