Ghosts. The most common of a monster; afflicting with no metaphor necessary to interpret its visual presence or meaning of their manifestation for they are what they are in every given moment: a personal monster. One that we run from, are afraid to face, and are powerless to let go of. Such is their hold over us. At the point of arrival, their disposal demands an all too personal growth that we instinctually run from if any other solution is presented. Despite that most common outcome, there is still an easier solution. One that circumvents the need to be better:

Don’t allow them to manifest, to exist, in the first place.

At the point of their arrival, move just that little bit further to surpass them, just one step ahead to be superior to their shape. Allow not the warnings of life to trouble your comfort.

Let me tell of a point in my life when a ghost appeared in my doorway. Standing prepared on the other side of the door, knowing its nature, ready to deny its entry; I still failed.

Sometimes it’s not so easy to do the obvious.

Too close to an event not yet fully over, one that already had me partially drained proved enough to let it slip through the crack. Rules are made by the living so dining it would be a false accusation spiraling me deeper into its arms. I had to take care of it here and now for the surprise it utilized to its advantage would prove enough to maneuver its way deep into my soul.

It all started with me observing an expression of love shared on a beach between one couple in the form of a kiss. After an already described swim, I thought I could use it as comfort. So I lingered on them, hoping to pick up the energy of something other than pure survival. A loving couple bound so close that it piqued my interest as one of those moments that made me question the footing I stood on.

It seemed to be more than love.

This vague, one-sentence interpretation of an event that happened now years in my past, finally deserves to be expanded upon. Not only for the narrative purpose intended to document my first possession but for the analysis of what it means to walk the path I now find myself on.

Let me start with the aforementioned event and the few fleeting moments that make it worth the time it takes me to write this.

If there exists such a state that offers any weakness into my mind, then it is the one I found myself in then, at that moment, while covered in water, my defenses withdrawn. That coupled with the aftermath and the event concerning a single bug, has left me in a state of exploitable vulnerability I rarely find myself in. And as such, the accounts I am about to witness are something I can not be sure are transferable as a story, but can rather be seen as damage inflicted on an already open wound.

Looking at the distance of the water’s edge, I feel sadness as I am never ready to leave its embrace. One person I glance over while doing this is a couple. I say person, not two of them, as it didn’t take me long to notice something not right here. I perceive them as such and before I have a chance to correct myself, I don’t. My initial instinct would prove right and in my mind, they will forever be one.

It shouldn’t be like that.
Something was definitely wrong.

A girl was one with simple natural beauty. Pale skin, reddish hair, and body language that hinted at someone fairly withdrawn was the path my mind took to come to this conclusion. He on the other hand radiated with confidence that seemed almost uncharacteristically strange. I came to this assumption as the content seemed not to belong in that container. Shallow empty eyes housed in a large sluggish frame are usually not part of the build that births such a persona. One full of confidence.

“Maybe it’s money?” I think to myself. Maybe a societal position gives him that reassurance. On the back foot of that conclusion, I take another look to maybe notice something more to help confirm this.

That’s when it happens.

The man I described was no longer there, in his place sat a strong figure. One that fits perfectly with the previously noticed persona. That in itself would be enough to get my full attention, it would have, if not for the girl. The once natural beauty sitting beside him was now a poor, sad sluggish shadow of the creature I saw only a moment sooner. Her withdrawn nature was no longer a result of shy beauty but accumulated shame. This was worth more than my attention, it demanded every ounce of caution I could muster, as it there was no doubt anymore that this was much worse than I thought!

In that moment I knew that if my experiences were destined for anything, they were there so I could act in this moment now. All so I would be able to accept the absurdity of this situation as someone accustomed to the strange.

While getting out of the water I didn’t allow myself to lose sight of them, now and then stealing a private moment with a quick look. But such a tactic soon backfired as they eventually noticed one of my many invasions of their privacy. From that point forward my approach would have to change to one more subtle. But soon after that, or maybe because of it, they left, and being noticed ruined the chance to simply follow them in the guise of coincidently sharing the same path up the hill. No, the situation was more delicate now so I had to let them leave my sight before acting out any kind of new plan.

“It didn’t matter” I decided. They were on foot and I was on a motorcycle. There was only one way up that hill, and I knew it by heart. Up to a certain point, the road consisted of a single path, and I could visualize how long it would take them to reach its end. The plan was to catch up with them before they got to the first branching point, making it look like I started my way up at a much later point, casually passing them and hiding right where the road splits making it possible to track them further.

The plan was to improvise after that.

I say plan as it never amounted to more than that. I drove up to that point certain they would be there. Was I wrong? Were they so spooked by me that they predicted even this outcome and hurried to avoid me? No! It couldn’t be. I accounted for that chance. No one can move that fast on foot alone. The only way it could be done in such a short amount of time was if they were running.

Could they have perceived me as such a threat to elicit such a response?!
The thought “Is it possible I was so out of touch?!” drained what little energy I still had and left me defeated on the side of that dusty road.

If at that moment I had any idea of what it would bring birth to, maybe I would have searched harder, and done more. Stalked every house I came upon and accept I was willing to cross that line. For it is probably better to be labeled by the living than haunted by ghosts.

You see… One of the qualities that defines me, one that birthed my “unique vantage point” by way of my learning to fight against it, is my dyslexia. As extreme as my vision of the World is, I am limited by it not only in the written word that describes the condition but a visual one as well. With years it somehow managed to invade my ability to communicate overall, and at a certain point, my ability to distinguish people altogether. To put it simply, people were starting to lose their faces seen through my eyes.

A flat surface of skin and a world of My Own Creation in more ways than not was all I could see through them. My world was just that much more of an empty canvas than everyone else’s. My imagination carried more weight as it had more of a space to fill.

Such a world brought unexpected gifts only I had access to: I could paint a clearer, bigger world than anyone else. But alongside the obvious downside of struggling to write anything coherent without it first being reread and rewritten at least four times, there is the matter of Ghosts. Ghosts alongside Shadows plague my everyday life wherever I turn. You may think they are the same, but shadows are unprocessed emotions, while ghosts seem to be heavily processed regrets.

The written word I’m sharing with you now is something that I fight to retake here, while the communication with the outside that grows weaker as years pass, is something I started battling later in life with a video segment I communicate over YouTube.
The disappearing people were the symptoms that for a long time I considered a sign of my advancing condition, so I saw no way of batting it outside of confronting its cause in the hope that in time it might get better.

But the event that I recently played witness to has planted doubt deep in my mind. Can the third symptom also be fought?!

Was there even a third symptom to begin with, or was it simply just another plague on the world I wasn’t a part of?

It became a Ghost of mine.

In that time I couldn’t get an answer so now it haunts my life as every possibility all at once. I can’t face it because knowing I can’t get any new information only serves to instill doubt and failure to act. I can’t afford such a weakened state at this point so I choose to look away as much as possible. Everyone sees ghosts. I just see them clearer, sharper; and as such, much harder to ignore.