Ghost
"You are a ghost, there is no urgent place you need to be"
This said to Jennifer between 5:00 and 5:24 am this morning.
A strange not-quite-nightmare in the early hours right after i told myself i should get up. Maybe it was a place for her to speak to me for the first time in years...
As a teenager and distrubed younger adult i used to dream about my best friend, dead these 14 years by her own hands and bedsheets, often nightmares- accusations it was my fault, questions about why and realizations that she was really hidden away from me for years.
Last night was different. Listening to a trio of women play music in a coffee shop, i heard a familiar voice. As i crawl on hands and knees under tables and through legs, i see her standing up front, the adult she might have been. Legs from here to eternity, long curly dark hair in her eyes, tall and slender. The warbly soprano from middle school mellowed into a unique Seattle sound and she had matured into her supermodel potential. I both knew she was really there and that she never could be.
Maybe i need the Master's Paradox Machine from Doctor Who. Can she be both alive and dead, 16 and 34?
We talk about her tattoos, i notice how Seattle they are, and professional. She points out the handmade tattoos, the one's she prefers not to make public. We talk about how she became who she is, this ghostadult. Somehow i have sequestered her in a multitude of questions. In the past they may have been, "where were you all these years?" "why didn't anyone tell me you were still alive?" This time, i know. She was not hidden, this is the ghost of who she may have been. My questions center around anything and everything to do with WHY. Why did you commit suicide? What were you thinking about? What were you feeling? There are more questions, obscured by my brain, left to dreamland's whim.
I bothered her so much with questions that she became agitated and told me she had to be somewhere soon, she needed to leave.
"You are a ghost, there is no urgent place you need to be"
I do not presume to know whether ghosts are expected at parties, meetings or functions. In my mind, there was no need for her to leave, and all need for her to be with me.
We were sitting on wide steps leading to, perhaps, the Seattle Public Library downtown, as i questioned relentlessly and she tried to get away. As my eyes focus a little more i notice i am not talking to Jennifer, i am talking to my brother Michael, who really needs to leave; and does.
In the past I have been left broken hearted and bereft from my dreams about Jennifer. This one just made me curious and sad.
I wonder, could she have had this life we spoke about? Jennifer was psychotic (literally)and most likely was paranoid schitzophrenic. She confessed seeing diabolical black smoky ghosts following her, torturing her. She wrecked her room, painted her hair with green paint and wrote the most disturbing poetry you've ever read. Could she have had a "normal" Seattle life, in her 20's during the late 1990's and early 2000's? Would her tortured soul make it without the crutch of drugs like heroin? These are difficult questions, they make my heart sore and brainpan leaky.
*sigh* what can we do with what we can only imagine, what we will never know?
This said to Jennifer between 5:00 and 5:24 am this morning.
A strange not-quite-nightmare in the early hours right after i told myself i should get up. Maybe it was a place for her to speak to me for the first time in years...
As a teenager and distrubed younger adult i used to dream about my best friend, dead these 14 years by her own hands and bedsheets, often nightmares- accusations it was my fault, questions about why and realizations that she was really hidden away from me for years.
Last night was different. Listening to a trio of women play music in a coffee shop, i heard a familiar voice. As i crawl on hands and knees under tables and through legs, i see her standing up front, the adult she might have been. Legs from here to eternity, long curly dark hair in her eyes, tall and slender. The warbly soprano from middle school mellowed into a unique Seattle sound and she had matured into her supermodel potential. I both knew she was really there and that she never could be.
Maybe i need the Master's Paradox Machine from Doctor Who. Can she be both alive and dead, 16 and 34?
We talk about her tattoos, i notice how Seattle they are, and professional. She points out the handmade tattoos, the one's she prefers not to make public. We talk about how she became who she is, this ghostadult. Somehow i have sequestered her in a multitude of questions. In the past they may have been, "where were you all these years?" "why didn't anyone tell me you were still alive?" This time, i know. She was not hidden, this is the ghost of who she may have been. My questions center around anything and everything to do with WHY. Why did you commit suicide? What were you thinking about? What were you feeling? There are more questions, obscured by my brain, left to dreamland's whim.
I bothered her so much with questions that she became agitated and told me she had to be somewhere soon, she needed to leave.
"You are a ghost, there is no urgent place you need to be"
I do not presume to know whether ghosts are expected at parties, meetings or functions. In my mind, there was no need for her to leave, and all need for her to be with me.
We were sitting on wide steps leading to, perhaps, the Seattle Public Library downtown, as i questioned relentlessly and she tried to get away. As my eyes focus a little more i notice i am not talking to Jennifer, i am talking to my brother Michael, who really needs to leave; and does.
In the past I have been left broken hearted and bereft from my dreams about Jennifer. This one just made me curious and sad.
I wonder, could she have had this life we spoke about? Jennifer was psychotic (literally)and most likely was paranoid schitzophrenic. She confessed seeing diabolical black smoky ghosts following her, torturing her. She wrecked her room, painted her hair with green paint and wrote the most disturbing poetry you've ever read. Could she have had a "normal" Seattle life, in her 20's during the late 1990's and early 2000's? Would her tortured soul make it without the crutch of drugs like heroin? These are difficult questions, they make my heart sore and brainpan leaky.
*sigh* what can we do with what we can only imagine, what we will never know?