I don’t remember when I first thought of myself as a ghost, I just know I’ve always been one. It wasn’t until years after high school that I had a name for it. No one saw me, but I saw everyone and everything. It’s still that way, maybe more so because I’m a woman at the age of invisibleness. My friends and family see me, of course, but just the outer me. Not the real me. And just who is this real me? Am I the sick person, the one who has always been sick, since a very young age? Everything from scarlet fever to mono, to mumps and measles and of course, the cherry on top, neurofibromatosis (NF). The learning disabilities from NF kept me in the ‘stupid’ classes. That was fun. “I Learned the Truth at Seventeen” was a favorite for girls like me, and boy, could I relate. The question I torture myself with is did I do the best I could have done, given my challenges? I read endless accounts of how people succeed in spite of, and the more I read about them, the more depressed I get. I’m in pain that cannot be adequately described nor treated, but could I have done more? I write, but the process of sending something off to some publisher has always been too much for me, though lord knows I’ve done it. I had stacks of rejection notices at one time, but tossed them all. Now, with the Internet, I doubt I could publish my obituary let alone a story. Competition has scared me off. Life has scared me off. If you’ve ever see the movie “Meet me in St. Louis”, there is this scene where the two small girls were sitting on the stairs watching the young adults dance and party. Their little heads are peering between the slats on the banister.
That’s me. Peering at life. The closed candy store, the goodies just out of reach. My family has done quite well. My friends, and I’m blessed to have them, have done quite well. Not through the roof well, but well indeed. I’m happy for them, blessed to have them, but puzzled as to why they are in my life. I know I’m a good person and certainly deserving, but in many ways, we have little in common. And it gets worse as time goes by. Economics has made the divide smaller, of course. But educationally we are miles apart. I read endlessly and perhaps that’s made it easier for me to communicate on the same level. But the more I am alone (and I’m alone five, six, sometimes seven days a week) the harder it is for me to communicate at all. I lose the ability. On so many levels, lost is what I am.
I read the news, though I try not to, and I know that compared to most, I am indeed better off. I have a roof over my head, food in my belly and access to medical needs though the cost makes going for help difficult. Even with insurance, which my father pays, it’s horrifying. I don’t belong here on this planet, yet here is where I am. I wish to be elsewhere, I wish to be serving in some capacity. I pray that my spirit leave my body every night so that I might go somewhere to serve, to give comfort, to do SOMETHING. And I pray for death. All. The. Time. The pain is too great, the ability to bear it, too difficult. And besides, I am already, and always have been, a ghost.
