What Life Looks Like When You’re Always Haunted By The Ghosts Of Your Past

When you are the person who sees ghosts, you’re afraid to go out.

Your friends might be planning a Saturday karaoke party at the local bar, your phone might be buzzing with their calls and texts, your timeline slowly filling up to the brim with photos and videos and check ins, but you’re lying almost comatose in your bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the darkness engulf you slowly.

Because you’d rather wither away in the darkness of an empty apartment and lonely heart, than risk going to a crowded place and seeing the ghosts you’ve tried escaping from all this while.

You go to an exhibition and the ghost turns up right next to you, shoulders touching, staring at the same painting you’ve been trying to make sense of for the last ten minutes.

They sneak a glance at you.

“Tragic, how even art couldn’t keep a person alive”, they whisper, almost inaudible unless you were listening attentively. They know you were.

Then they’re gone, and you come back home, trembling worse than a porcelain mug caught in an earthquake. You’re at the gym, sweat trickling across your back, and you feel the coolness of it spreading under your clothes.

But then, you see the familiar pale, mocking reflection in the mirror, pointing to you, laughing.

“You really think this will do you any good?” it grins. The ghost is gone next moment. The seed of self doubt stays and breeds and spreads, destroying your confidence, bit by crumbling bit.

The ghosts are voices in your head at times. At times, they speak through your colleagues, your relatives, or anyone around you really. The ghosts are always judgemental.

The ghosts are always trying to tell you, “stop trying, stop swimming, stop breathing; you’re only making it worse”.

The ghosts are always trying to bring back memories of your past, memories you don’t want being brought back.

Sometimes they act as if they know better, but trust me, they never do.

When you’re a person who sees ghosts everywhere, you need to start making your voice stronger. So you can speak over their whispers, sing over their reminders, laugh over their haunting presence.

When you’re a person who sees ghosts, you need to start being out in the light more often, walk through parks in the evening, open the windows to your apartment as early in the morning as you can.

Soak it in. Let it soothe you.

When you’re a person who sees ghosts, build your own safe place. Build it in the smiles of your friends, in the arms of a lover, in the kindness of everyone around you.

There are places ghosts can’t haunt, and too often, it’s in someone’s heart.