The Ghost of Him

If I had had a choice in the matter, I would never have fallen in love with a dead man. The truth is, I did not seek it, nor did I simply see an opportunity and knowingly dive right in. I was fourteen years old and before I could really decipher what love was, he had already flung it over me, like a huge net, which he has proceeded to tug me around in at his feet every day since for the last sixteen years. When I told a friend of mine of the tears shed over this unhappy get glorious, hopeless yet inspiring love affair, and all the things he’d said to me, and all the things he’d done, she said “Tell him to go away.” I told her I would rather cry like a baby every night and be in a permanent state of depression over him, now buried in a cemetery thousands of miles from me, rather than him stopping coming to see me.

I suppose it all sounds very strange. It is very strange. I have always known that. I have always known that most people, when they see his picture, do not break down and cry, or turn away when they see his old house because I don’t want them to stare at the hot salty tears that roll delicately down till I taste them on my lips; nor when they sleep do they hear the things he comes and tells me, or the things he does to me. And I can’t tell them, because they wouldn’t believe me. And even if they did, I cannot bring myself to share such intimate things. I don’t think he wants me to tell of it in any case. So I don’t.

I suppose I could really be sectioned if one were to look deep enough into it. Maybe I have gotten so used to him and the situation I find myself in with him now that I no longer realise how peculiar it is. Luckily I have managed to disguise crying in public over him by pretending it’s from laughter, or if outdoors, a sharp breeze; and even more luckily, it’s often in a dark enough room in the evening whereby no-one would be able to tell anyway. But there has been the odd occasion where not hell or high water could stop the tears; and I cannot explain myself when asked, and so I wonder if I will ever really be ble to be in the same room as someone who by chance mentions his name for fear of furrowed eyebrows that turn my eyes startled and afraid,with my hands to my lips to hide their downturning and trembling, and again those waters that come with the sound of his name. And I do not cry easily. I am made of harder stuff. But not when it comes to him.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that I miss him. I miss him every single day; and today is one of those days when the sun is beating down, and for some reason when the sun is so hot on a day like this, I miss him even more. Something, lost somewhere long ago in the mists of time, comes alive again in the sunshine, and I feel him with me, like smelling a familiar smell, or feeling that someone is following you, though you know you are alone.

But there is no solution, no cure, no remedy. The ghost of him walks; and so it will be, for I’d rather have that little echo of him than nothing left at all.