memoir

In a Haze

For years, I felt like a passenger in my own life. When I began writing, it helped clear the haze, and I began to trust the memories and thoughts I had dismissed.

Photo by Conor MacCormack.

If you’re receiving this, you previously subscribed to my writing on Substack. I’m on Ghost now. I also went fully anonymous on Substack. A few friends, welcome to the other side of me. It's Hawtorn V. Rabot, HVR, though a few of you know me real name.

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I’ve spent seemingly years of my life walking in a haze. Maybe more. Maybe decades.

I used to feel like I had my foot on the gas. I could brake. I could speed up. I could slow down.

Then it was like I was a passenger.

Someone else was driving my life. I took whatever came.

Watched myself.

I watched myself watch myself.

I was at the mercy of every external factor imaginable. It didn’t make me blame or hate, but I felt no real control over my life. I was just there.

The haze. The smoke. It was in the air all around me.

Like smoke from the wildfires, it clouded every moment.

People are warned not to go outside.

Some places shut down when people can’t see their own hands in front of their faces, and that’s no way to drive.

My memory isn’t great.

Especially lately.

There was before COVID and after COVID. Once I began writing and the memories returned, some of the smoke cleared. I could see. The memories and thoughts I dismissed? I began to trust them.

I could see where my doubts were warranted: where I was right to question myself. I could also see where and why I ignored them.

So much is still lost.

“Trauma.”

I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. Not all of it, at least.

I suppose memories fall away anyway.

I began writing to know where I was to blame. What did I do? Where was I responsible?

I wanted to take ownership. I wanted an internal locus of control. I didn’t want to blame others. You can’t change if it’s on someone else.

As more and more came back, I realized what was done began when I was a minor.

Every therapist and pastor dismissed it, so I guess I locked it out.

Though not really. Not fully.

I never did forget. It all still affects me every single day. It did then too. I just didn’t know it.

After the events in Colombia in 2025 (I cover that time in my book, Too Soon Et Pero Too Late, which you can buy through the About page), I was in EMDR therapy between one and three times a week. I wrote about experiences on Substack.

After four months of nonstop therapy, I needed a break.

I had gone over it all already. At least the parts I knew of.

What more?

I was tired.

I was dreading it.

I remain a patient, but I’m still on my break. I’m not opposed to going back, though I’m not ready yet.

I need to be able to come home and fall apart without having to be a responsible adult afterward; I’m exhausted after navigating how events unfolded in my life, and I blame(d) myself for them.

The wildfires spread, and the smoke continues to this day.

I’ve got this, and I’ve seen worse.

In the meantime, I’m used to the smoke.

The haze is what I know.

I learned to drive in unsafe conditions.

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