Day 254 - My Ghosts Began to Fade Away

My Ghosts Began to Fade Away

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

Haunted still, so many years later. We, the lost and lonely, trapped together. The music began soft and sweet, then faded away. I looked in the mirror and wondered what it was I was seeing. The light played tricks and there were shapes and streaks and a blur that would not focus. Alone at night, the low tone of distress, and the crackles and pops would begin with no clear source and no discernible reason or answer.

My imagination as a child would fill in the dark patterns at night. Smoke from a closet. The shadow hand that would creep around the corner. Footsteps that would follow when there was no one there. My parents would tell me there was nothing there, but in the deep recesses of my mind I knew they were wrong. Sometimes it was just a motion, caught in the corner of my periphery. Sometimes the branches of the trees would reach out and find my window.

No answer would do. No reason was right. The thoughts, the feelings did not care what was and wasn’t. Peeking out between crossed fingers, trying to catch a glimpse of what wasn’t there. The secrets of the universe that might creep about when no one was there.

She told me one night that I had a haunted spirit. I asked her how she knew and she said she could read my aura and that I reminded her of herself. I remember what she said, all those years ago, telling me I was surrounded but lonely. My mind aflutter, my thoughts jumbled and rapidly changing. I was given a dream catcher to sleep under and a Rhodonite crystal to clear my mind. I kept them for years while not believing they did anything. Once upon a time I could say exactly where they were, even if that meant they were boxed and stored away. I have no idea what I did with them now. My dreams can still form chaos.

What was her name, I was never sure. She went by a flower or a spell or a chakra, but I knew that was her chosen title and not her name. The memory fades, like so many other things. How can you tell if something was real when you can’t remember the details?  

So long gone. The hopes, the dreams, the other paths. What could have been, what could have been tried or done. The steps behind were limitless. The steps beside were few. The steps ahead? I know not what remains. One or two?

I saw a path, I chose the path, but still I always wondered, what was on the other side. What could I become? What doors did I close, but what other versions existed, making a million different steps along the way. They were the ones, so many of them, following me or leading me or challenging me to a race I didn’t know I was running. The choices haunted me dreams, opened a window for me to see a million different options that never would be.

One step forward in the light of day. One step forward without a step to the side. No future and no past. Just the now. Change your focus and the rest will follow.

I still wonder what could have been. Time blurs and the past is so long ago, I have no idea what was real or what could have been. If some other me made a better choice good on them. If some other world does exist, then perhaps they are happy and satisfied and it is a better place. I’ll never know.

I take one step and focus on that. The other footprints no longer so pronounced. They fade, just like everything else. The shadows creep to their corner. The whispers grow softer. But when I close my eyes, I can still see the tricks of the light and I wonder who is there and what they did better along the way.