Beneath the Wave

Ghost

             Waking up was torture. Getting out of bed brought certain death. It hurt to stand, it hurt to walk, it hurt to speak. I would have rather sat in my own stink than feel clean. People spoke at me, but their words felt more like sharp daggers than kind advice.

I was a ghost. I watched people pass me, and sometimes I reached out. But as soon as they turned to help me, I flinched away like their touch was poison. I didn't want to be a ghost but the prospect of life or death was far too terrifying to live any other way.

I walked among the living, pretending I was like them. Most of the time they did not see me. When they did, I smiled and pretended like it was not painful. I waved at them as if I had any feeling in my skin. Roses and lilies danced out of my mouth, but they did not bring the sweet smell with them. Instead it was the smell of something fake, something chemical, something completely unnatural. They were the plastic flowers you bought at the dollar store. The kind you smiled at, and pretended you were happy to receive.

People wanted more of me. They wanted the realness, the truth of my situation. They did not understand that I did not want to make them bleed with me. The thorns that crawled from my throat had torn up my insides and left me with irreparable damage. I had spit false, pretty words at my loved ones, suffering in silence so that my pain would not damage them as well.

I was such a pathetic ghost. I wanted to be seen, but I feared what they might find when they looked too close. The curve of my smile was nothing but stitches, the glimmer in my eyes were tears. I disguised a cry with a laugh, pretended that I was shaking from laughter. I walked among the living, but I was not fully there. I was a façade, a mask I had placed to defy the voices yelling in my head.

Worthless! Stupid! Ugly!

They never stopped! I may have been the ghost, but I was the one being haunted. I'd wake up in the morning praying that I would fall back asleep, I'd lay down at night hoping that if I fell asleep quick enough I would not have the urge to draw a blade across my wrist. I was a ghost who could not decide whether she wanted to continue living or give up and rest.

I wanted to be with them. Watching your friends, your family, live life with smiles, real smiles, on their faces was so painful. I wanted to make the memories with them. I wanted my smile to be real. I wanted the glimmer in my eyes to be happiness, I wanted to shake with laughter! My future just seemed so bleak. To a ghost, you can do nothing but float, endlessly. You become so angry with the people you love, for leaving you behind, for enjoying life without you, but you know that it isn't their fault. That you wouldn't want them to be upset.

It's the only reason that the ghost never truly leaves.

I was a ghost, but I only ever haunted myself.