Haunted

You thought you were okay. You thought I was gone, that I was chained up, that maybe you had starved me to death, that I was a husk, dried and dead.  You thought you were okay, that you had risen above it all. You forgot that I will always be here, waiting for your guard to drop, for you to get too confident, for you to get too comfortable.

I will never die.

When your son asked if you believed in ghosts you said no, but you lied.  You believe in ghosts. You believe in me.  I'm real.  Even if you forgot, even if you want to deny it, I am here now and I will stay until you are a ghost yourself.  

The word is haunted.

I want you to hit things, I want you to scare the people you love.  I want you to fill yourself with desolation, with bleak blind despair.  You get it. You remember.  You are alone, you are a fucking loser.  You remember, don't you? That you are inconsequential, that you are a fat stupid asshole?  You get it, even if others want to tell you different, you understand things they don't.

Break bones, scream curses.  Become a monster.

Become me.

Maybe there is a world somewhere in the infinite, maybe there is a universe where you are a good person, maybe there is somewhere where it isn't a struggle, where you can relax, where you can stop fighting the inevitable.  Maybe somewhere in the infinite.

But not here.

You should have told your son yes.  Yes, you do believe in ghosts, and they are all me and they are all you. What you could have told him but never will is that the ghosts we need to fear aren't returned spirits of living people but the never ending litany of ways you have fucked up, the mile high list of your failures, the little movies that play behind your eyes when you try to sleep; remember when you were such a disappointment, remember how you spoke, how you hated, remember-

Oh, that one cut too deep huh? You can't even bring yourself to confess, you can't even write it out, you coward?

Remember the times you cannot remember, remember everything you have ever said or done, remember the void, the infinite and forever darkness there behind your eyes-

Hah, you thought you were okay.

When your son asked if you believed in ghosts, you said no, that that's not how any of this works.  You said death represents a final rest, you asked him why would a spirit want to hang around here, hiding in your closet or behind the shower curtain?  You wanted to be reassuring, you wanted him to believe he is safe.  And maybe he is safe.  Except from you.  Maybe what you should have said was that ghosts are in our minds, imprinted on our souls, that only we can create them and only we can dispel them. Maybe what you should have said is that ghosts are us, and we create our own haunting.  You could have told him don't worry about ghosts son, they can't hurt you.  Worry about monsters.  They are very real and there is one very close right now. Can you feel its breath, can you hear its pernicious whispers?  Can you see its bloody hands, smell the hot iron on its breath?

Ghosts are just us.  Monsters are just us too.

I'll go away, you know I will.  I will hide away somewhere under your skin, somewhere in your blood, and I will wait, and one day you will heal, you will begin to think you are okay again.  You will forgive yourself, once again, and you will start to relax and maybe let down your guard, and there I will be, in your tears and in your shattered bones, and the bitter taste of ash in your mouth.

You can fight all you want.

But one day-

One day I will win.

Hah, you thought you were okay. 

Still Writing, 

RP 5-13-25

 

Sigh.  Its a back to the drawing board kinda life, isn't it?  Hopefully this shit means something, hopefully writing these things helps dispel some ghosts, somewhere somehow.  Anyway, comment here, email me a dissent.within at gmail.com, and I am on Bluesky @rpullins.bsky.social, and still on Facebook, for the moment at least, but I have deactivated my Twitter.  Hit me up and let me know what you think; I don't write these things for my mental health, jeez.