Ghosts

By: Raquel Dionísio

“Uncovered eyes make it harder to hide at night. In the daytime, a pair of sunglasses helps mask the loneliness of those who want to remain anonymous in their pain. 

This town is full of ghosts. Each is replaced by the next in the bitter outcome of yet another unrequited hug. There is a specter in every corner. I feel their eyes burning on the back of my head when all I want is to meet their gaze. I turn around, but no one is there. 

I still look for you in the faces and bodies of strangers. They seem suddenly familiar given how much of you I project onto them. I fear and hope to see you again. Always. I can’t help this vicious circle: you are everywhere. Like the flu, all I can do is wait for you to go away.” 

I found this text a couple of days ago in an old, pathetic attempt at a blog I had going on for a short time and which, because I didn’t water it, prematurely died. I had to think hard about who the “you” I referred to was and, honestly, I am still not quite sure. I wrote this in 2012, but the truth is that it could have been written almost every year since then. 

My writing is full of ghosts of past unloves: people I wanted to get to know better but never did; people who couldn’t care less about knowing me at all. Sometimes I think this unattainable “you” is in fact what gets me going, what leads me to write, to long, to search within myself for the reason I want to reach the unreachable. I keep yearning for those who keep me at a distance in a frustrating and permanent feeling of disconnection that clouds my heart with a never‐ending fog. 

Just before I pass to the next one, just when the obsession with the current ghost is already unbearable and has been there long enough for me to act a little crazy, I see this person in everyone’s face. I never completely forget my ghosts. Each just gets replaced by the next one. I call them “ghosts” because they are not really in my life. They don’t want to be. But they take over my head: tricking my eyes, grabbing my thoughts, erasing my brain. They haunt my pages; they own my emotions; they leave room and time for nothing else. Or is it me doing all of that? 

I don’t remember who this “you” in my text was, but all of it could be now addressed to you, my ghost from the present. Whenever I see a tall stranger with blond hair and a pair of glasses, there you are. I can’t get rid of you. Truth be told, I don’t want to. I long to hear from you every day, even though you haven’t replied to me in weeks. It doesn’t matter when or how many times I try to reach you. You’re always out of my touch. I still hope we can meet and talk and smile and be together. I don’t really believe any of that, but I know I hope for it. 

In the meantime, days and weeks go by, and I keep convincing myself I have to let you go. I must get rid of you. You’re a virus with no vaccine to prevent me from getting infected. No pain killer to stop your silence from hurting me. No brain surgery to remove you from my dreams. No doctor to help me cure this obsession turned sickness. I need to let you go. 

I need to let you go. I need to let you go. I need to let you go.