Raise the Rent

On the person who is living in your head without paying

From The Real Love Diet by Susan Foxley

For years I carried somebody with me everywhere.

To the grocery store. To bed at night. Into rooms they had never been invited into. I rehashed the story of what they did to me while I stood in line for coffee, while I folded laundry, while I was supposedly having dinner with people I loved.

And then one day I looked at it honestly and thought: this person is living rent-free inside my head. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Taking up the most valuable real estate I own — the space between my ears.

It was time to raise the rent. And then evict them.

Here is what I want to be careful about, because I have been on the receiving end of cheerful advice about forgiveness and it did not help. Forgiving somebody is not saying it was fine. It is not reconciling. It is not trusting them again, and it is certainly not inviting them back to dinner. You can forgive somebody completely and never speak to them again.

It is also not instant coffee. It took me years, and some days I have to do it again.

But here is the part that finally moved me. You did not choose the harm. Somebody else did that. What belongs to you now is the tenancy — the fact that they are still in there, decades later, rent free, while they go about their day not thinking about you at all.

You do not have to forgive perfectly. You do not have to forget. You have to set down what you have been carrying.

So ask yourself the question I finally had to ask myself:

Who is living rent-free in my mind right now?

And what would today look like if you got that space back?

Susan Foxley is a yoga teacher, life coach and hypnotherapist in Santa Monica. The Real Love Diet is available soon.