Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Excerpt From A Ghost's Diary Part 3

Part one, go here

Part two, go here

August 12th, 2004
Hello diary.  My only constant it seems in a vague, shifting existence.  It’s summer now, and while I never much cared for the warm weather when I was alive, I do like seeing people enjoying the outdoors.  So alive, out in the light and the warmth of the sun.  Of course, I can’t feel the warmth of the sun anymore.  If I had known how cold the rest of eternity would be, I might have made more of the opportunities I had to get out and enjoy it.  People picture ghosts rattling around in old, deserted places, late at night and forlorn, but for the most part we are right there with you, at the beach, watching you play sports, laughing as you miss that three foot putt.  We surround you as you live out your lives in the light, and we try to live through you, but we can’t fool ourselves.  We will never feel the sun on our skin, we will never feel the touch of another living being.  We just coexist alongside you, and what you think is the breeze is simply our lonely sighs.

October 30th, 2004
Well, tomorrow is Halloween, so I guess everyone assumes it’s a big deal for us ghosts.  It really makes no difference, to be honest.  Most of the other things you associate with the holiday aren’t real.  No vampires, or zombies or werewolves and such.  As far as the ghosts go, I think we’ve already established that they are nothing like we imagine them in movies or books.  I don’t think I ever explained our appearance though.  We are often dressed in the clothes popular to the period we died in.  They change from time to time, did you know that?  I think our outward appearance(even though most of you never see it, we are very rarely visible to the living and much of what you think are ghosts are simply tricks of the light or your imagination) is based on how we saw ourselves when we were alive.  The clothes change slightly as our memory becomes fuzzy, but our appearance reflects how we saw ourselves in life.  That’s why so many ghosts look like hideous monsters.  We are an amalgamation of all of our insecurities and self love or hatred, and the result is rarely pleasing to look at.  Most of us still look the way we did in life, but many times all of our perceived flaws and faults are magnified through our own psyche and we present ourselves to the world as we truly saw ourselves.  Whenever one of us ghosts comes across a particularly attractive and normal looking ghost, we are all jealous and feel sad about the way we thought about ourselves when we were alive.  On Halloween, instead of being frightened by imaginary monsters, be frightened of the way you see yourself.  The you that exists in your mind’s eye is usually the scariest monster of all, and like most monsters, they don’t exist at all.  

March 17th, 2005

Hello diary!  I know it’s been quite awhile since I’ve written.  It’s not easy getting my thoughts together and jotted down.  As it is, I have to write this on foggy mirrors and in centuries old dust that accumulates far from other’s eyes.   I don’t even know if anyone is seeing this, and I don’t remember where I wrote the last part down.  Basically everything I’m doing here is pointless, but wasn’t most of the stuff I did while I was alive just as pointless?  We attach so much importance to so many trivial things while we are alive and we often make decisions while in the grip of fear and uncertainty that we seldom get it right.  The good news is that there are no right and wrong answers most of the time.  Some moves set us back a little, some push us ahead, and most of the time we end up going nowhere.  We just think we are because the scenery changes around us or we get swept along whether we’re ready or not. Being dead only lets you replay it all over in your mind again and again, but the time to make a decision is long past.  Sadly, it seems that the more time you have to think, the more jumbled your thoughts become.  That’s because there is no end game to examining and reexamining a problem or an idea.  If you are afraid of something, the more you think about it the more frightened you become.  If you are confused, the more you think the more confusing angles you will start seeing.  If there is a tiny bit of doubt in your mind about anything, thinking will only ever increase that doubt.  We are blessed with this amazing brain, capable of wondrous things, yet we only seem to use it to torture ourselves with worry and fear.  We all want to imagine immortality, to picture an afterlife that goes on for eternity because we can’t accept that our minds and our consciousness won’t live on.  Well, the good news is, it does. For all eternity, floating around wondering what might have been and realizing that all the time in the world does nothing to erase the fears and indecision you felt all your life.  The only difference is, when you’re dead it doesn’t really matter at all, mostly like it didn’t really matter when you were alive, and that fact only makes it worse.

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