The Better Ghosts of Me
It’s all about that moment for me. That one unbearably cold gaze from a lover, or the realization you’ve wasted your life pursuing dreams that didn’t belong to you. When it finally dawns on you that you will never find a way to be consistently happy. Night and day start to lose their meanings, everything just becomes time weightlessly shifting in the surreal galaxies surging through you. I wanted things at one point in my life. That’s the thing I regret the most truly; wanting. It would be so easy to go through life hoping that nothing happens to you. That, maybe in some way, your innocence can be preserved by removing yourself from the life equation. But then you live by accident. You fall into something you think is love, you convince yourself that your interests must mirror others to the point where you don’t even know you’re trying. I look at these scars that brush my body and in some way I feel okay. I am alive and sometimes that gets me through a day. But then without trying, yet again, I accidentally think. Reflect on the follies of relationships; not strictly lovers either. These friends and acquaintances that I never really had a concrete position on swiftly transformed into dirty pieces on a gigantic crooked chess board. So what really is the best way to sell someone on existing? Is it best to weave an extravagant meretricious paradise? Where clouds never falter and the newspaper only has good things to say. Where you know your purpose and are no longer blank a fabric traveling from place to place waiting to be written on or torn into divine pieces.
I have lived, despite my age I’m certain in the conjecture that I’ve seen the peaks and the valleys of what being has to offer. The only reason I’m still here is because everything equals out when you want it to lean to one side. Dying could be nice on a day when you get no mail. Living sounds great when you have one less thing to worry about. The hair on your arms is thick enough and your stomach is a little flatter today. You lost your job but you ran into an old friend who genuinely cared for you at a point in time. Your dad has a terminal illness but it’s made your mother stop drinking so much. Walking by yourself feels like you’re walking with the whole world. Walking by yourself feels like you’re taking those few faltering steps towards whatever holy illusion has sheltered you. But never will you truly feel swayed towards one position on living. You’re forever caught in an exalted purgatory, and that is what life is. A grand waiting room where you have no control over the outcome of your stay. No matter how hard you try to be early or courteous or kind there will always be old magazines. There will always be an older woman sneezing near you or a child making an incorrigible noise their parents cannot seem to hear.
So when it is your time, and you’re full of fear and a mild level of worry; you will not reflect on your life. You will continuously consider the life of others. You will wonder if they will be able to see that life is a bitter gift. The apathetic shroud you’re trying to untangle yourself from will dissolve. So that when you gasp for the last time, everyone in the world will have that feeling of almost getting into a car accident. Of knowing you’re about to drop something before it falls. And you’re gaze will pierce the building and shoot outwards into a giant prism hovering around the earth. You will be reflected back into a collective of glorious love that has no limits. Without trying you have become a part of everyone and without living you have surrendered every part of you. You are an energy felt by everything, and you never have to think about love or hate; because you are the thoughts of others. Your death, much like your life, will cause an incalculable wave of euphoric change, forever.
P.S. I still don’t know what made me write this. I’m weaned off my meds at this point and feel kind of sad sometimes. I’m also getting into old sci fi books and I went to an art museum for the first time in like…10 years yesterday. Sometimes I think I’m happy.
-Steven Laffery
