I Ghosted Myself

I was not always this open.

For most of my life, I protected my relationships with small white lies. It was all part of the “good girl” act I forced upon myself, and in doing so, I ended up ghosting myself.

My perfectionism often led me to struggle when making a choice.

In the end, I was told by my mother that I needed to grow up while I kept calling her to choose on my behalf.

I never had an interest in growing up, which is why I have a Peter Pan tattoo on my left calf.

It all started with the beginning of my end.

When my health worsened all of a sudden in 2023, it led me to a state of anxiety where I woke up every day, worrying if I could walk properly.

I suspended my master’s indefinitely and returned to Turkey to seek medical treatment.

I kept the curtains closed for the next four months. There wasn’t a day without me saying I wanted to die at least three times. The world did not disappear but nothing in it felt reachable.

I searched for ways to erase myself, a disappearance disguised as fate. Its glimpse didn’t appear as a burden, but as a saviour from the hell I had to call my life.

I was watching a comedy show one day when an advertisement for a newly opened clinic appeared.

I recognised the doctor.

When the day of the appointment arrived, my sister was on holiday with her boyfriend, my father was at work, and my mother was tired.

I went alone.

“Your muscles are very stiff. Too stiff,” the doctor said.

My chest moved with breath, but without depth.

The doctor continued, “Your arm doesn’t swing naturally when you walk. It stays a little closer to your body, slightly rigid, as if it’s holding something invisible. Movements like that should be automatic, not requiring conscious effort.

You don’t turn your head fluidly. It is mechanical. Your facial expressions are slower, smaller, and less responsive.”

My shoulders dropped without being told.

“I want to try something out,” the doctor said as she wrote me a prescription.

Levodopa.

At first, nothing changed.

My movements still felt deliberate, held back. My muscles were firm, as if they were bracing for something that never quite happened. Even stillness had tension in it.

Then I noticed my breath dropping a little deeper, my chest expanding without effort.

There was less of that subtle holding.

The stiffness began to loosen, as if warmth were spreading through my tight muscles.

My shoulders released themselves. My neck turned more easily.

That invisible resistance softened.

My fingers responded faster. Typing felt smoother.

Buttons, zips, and small tasks stopped feeling like obstacles and went back to being automatic.

My walking changed.

Less calculated steps. Arms swinging again without me thinking about them.

A month later, the medication didn’t feel like a drug anymore. It felt like my body had remembered itself.

My body was no longer something I had to manage. It became something I could inhabit again, fully, without thinking.

My diagnosis arrived much later.

Though I’ve been aware of the possibility of Parkinson’s, I didn’t allow my mind to settle.

Following my recovery, I started feeling invincible. After all those years of taking myself for granted, I was finally able to celebrate those miraculous moments that I used to think I was owed by life.

The truth is, life does not owe us anything.

I learned the hard way that these kinds of experiences don’t land on everyone.

They choose you because something in you can carry them.
Because somehow, you’ll walk out with grace.
You’ll learn to make discomfort your new comfort.

At first, I felt like I was made of steel. Invincible.

Then in time, I began acting as if it were not me but someone else who struggled with walking. I wanted to erase that memory from everyone else’s life, including myself.

Forcing my mind to forget what my body remembered, I started living as if I were taking back what life owed me, returning to my old patterns shortly after that. I started forcing myself into a life I outgrew, partying every weekend, seeing my ex-boyfriend, and forcing myself to fulfil expectations of all sorts.

Before long, life began to feel shallow again.

I was grateful to be alive, not having to worry whether people would stare while I gathered every ounce of strength for my next step, only for the outcome to lead me back to my mother’s shoulder.

I do not blame myself for that.

I blame myself for the ungratefulness I grew into, for forsaking my health again, but more importantly, for abandoning the girl who endured the life I outran without ever looking back.

Until I found myself sitting cross-legged in a room of twenty people, all dressed in black, waiting for the realm the medicine would take me to.

Though, indirectly, I was introduced to ayahuasca much earlier than I realised.

The year I graduated from high school, my sisters attended their first ceremony. Mine came much later.

I drank the first cup of medicine in one gulp.

All the emotions I had suppressed did not arrive in order. I had no choice but to surrender to my tears. They grew louder as I kept screaming,
“Please stop. I am human too.”

I was not speaking to the medicine. I was speaking to myself, the self I had been ghosting since my recovery.

Every shadow I had tried to outrun.
My anger. My sadness. My longing to be seen.
The versions of me that felt unworthy.

My body started trembling. A default setting whispered,

“You can’t cry, you’re going to make your sister worry.”

Then I realised that’s how it always had been. The happiness of others came above else, forcing myself into expectations that came with roles.

I could not get a hold of myself, not until there was nothing left to hide.

When I finally stopped resisting, the storm broke. I pulled the blanket over my head like a life jacket, as if it could hide me from the weight of being myself.

I couldn’t stop.

The shaman said,
“Who is crying over there?”

“Me,” I said. “I cannot stop.”

“Come here, dear,” she replied.

I crawled over in the dark and sat across from her, cross-legged.

She whispered her chants into my ears. Slowly, I grew calm, melting onto the floor until I found myself lying on my stomach.

They blew out the candles, and I fell asleep in the middle of the sacred circle.

The next day, I was scared.

I knew what the medicine was capable of, but what if my heart was too burdened to carry it?

I wore white that night. Waiting for what it would reveal, I finished the first cup.

Whatever the night before was, this was its opposite.

It was as if a door inside me opened, and I met the brightness I had forgotten.

A little girl sat, cross-legged, enchanted by life, dancing with wonder. Amid her laughter, I apologised for not loving her enough. In return, she showed me the world through her eyes, the mischief, the joy of being alive.

Towards the end of the ceremony, each member of the circle stepped into the centre. I watched every expression, fascinated by the countless possibilities of wonder.

That was when I decided to get a Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, tattooed onto my skin.

Not as a refusal to grow, but as a reminder that even though life is fleeting, the little girl’s wonder still lives within me.

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