The Walk-In

Did you ever wonder if, perhaps, you were not the first resident inside your own head?

A very long time ago, I read a book by Ruth Montgomery...a book that mentioned "walk-ins," or souls that filled in when the original resident fled from fear, pain, or depression. Is it possible that a tortured soul could flee a body, to be replaced by another soul, a much older soul? Could that explain a child who never played with other children; a child who sailed past serious all the way to grim?

Could such a thing explain a lifetime of not feeling comfortable in one's own skin?

It is an intriguing mind-game to play -- in an eerie, creepy, twilight-zone way...

Mick

The Walk-In

My mom told me I was born an old man,
That I never played with another kid.
I was always the leader of the clan,
And mostly, I watched what other kids did.
I remember how silly my siblings were,
Running about and screaming and yelling,
But I sat with my mom, I read to her,
And told stories that grew with the telling -
Stories too complex for someone so small,
And poems too, some very compelling.
She wondered aloud where I learned it all:
Old soul's memories in a new dwelling...
Perhaps, when I was just eighteen months old -
A moment of unendurable pain;
A terrible story I've often told,
But come back to it again, and again.
Did the first me decide to leave one night,
Too frightened, too shocked, and too terrified,
To deal with the pain, to stay there and fight -
Instead did I leave as I screamed and cried?
Did I simply vacate the premises,
And give the keys to a new resident?
Did the pain become my great nemesis,
The terror I feared would never relent?
Did an ancient soul take over my shell,
Abandoned that night in hungry shadow;
Did another arrive to thrive and dwell,
With a library full of things to know?
And does this explain, as nothing else can,
Why mom told me I was born an old man?

Mick McKellar
March 2009