Excerpts From A Ghost's Diary Part 4

For part one, go here

For part two, go here

For part three, go here

September 27, 2006

Fall is underway.  I used to love this time of year when I was alive.  I loved to hear the leaves skitter across the road, and crunch under your feet.  Of course, now my footsteps don’t make a sound.  If you really want to feel useless and forgotten, try walking without ever making a noise, going unnoticed everywhere you go.  No one sees you when you enter a room, no one hears your laughter or sees you smile or grimace, or reacts to your moans of torment.  You are completely ineffectual to those around you.  Other ghosts notice, but as I have explained before, most of them are too wrapped up in their own little world, consumed by some past transgression or unfinished business to care about you and your problems.  So now you pass through the world, undetected by those that are too self absorbed with their own issues to care or those that don’t even know you are there.

September 28, 2006

It’s not even October, and there seems to be Halloween stuff everywhere.  I am even seeing Christmas paraphernalia appear.  What is it with the living that they are always rushing life along?  They never seem to appreciate where they are.  It’s like life is so boring that they can’t wait for some event in the future that they think will make it better, but when they arrive at that point they are already looking past it to the next thing.  Why do we look for fulfilment in things that haven’t happened yet, all the while ignoring where we are right now?  The only chance we have to manufacture happiness is in the moment we are occupying at the time.
I also like to laugh at the people I see loading their shopping carts with Halloween candy on sale this time of the year.  You are fooling no one, people.  If you are buying Halloween candy in September you are just going to go home and eat that candy yourself.  I don’t have to be a ghost to see that.
FYI: I can totally see that. Seriously, I pass through your walls and notice you on the couch, torn fun sized candy bar wrappers strewn all around you.  You know what?  Enjoy your candy.  Who cares what a ghost sees?  You are simply fulfilling that pledge you made to yourself as a small child, that when you got to be an adult you would buy all the candy you want and eat it all the time.  You are simply making your childhood dreams come true.

October 3, 2006

I talked about how I used to love this time of year.  Now though, it just serves to remind me that another year is coming to a close.  If you think time flew when you were living, wait until you’re dead.
Time is relentless. It doesn't stop for any reason. It doesn't care about you, if you're awake or asleep, experiencing unparalleled joy or crushing misery, dead or alive.  Time will steal everything from you when you’re not paying attention, and leave you far behind. True, time heals all wounds, but I’ve come to see that it is not that cut and dry.  Simply waiting for time to make everything better is not enough.  The  wounds that it heals will heal regardless of what you do with those minutes or hours, days or weeks.  You can just sit there and wait for the pain to become a dull ache, or you can get on with your life and help time with its work.  We use the time it takes to forget as an excuse to wallow and feel sorry for ourselves instead of putting the effort into making our own happiness and fixing the damage others have caused us.  All the while, time is slipping by you and somehow dragging you along with it at the same instance.  It is a tricky thing to achieve, but it does it effortlessly.
Time is going to keep ticking away, counting down the days of your life(and later, your afterlife) without flinching. The same trait that puts distance between the events of your life, that brings you closure to pain, or causes more torment and loneliness, is a constant byproduct of its never ending march towards nothing. Time has it’s endgame set on a point trillions of years in the future, and you mean nothing to it at all.  It is not your friend, but a thief, taking every precious moment away from you, even as they are happening.  Take it from someone that has nothing left but time.
By the time you experience any moment of joy, it is already gone, and fading memories are the only thing time leaves you in its wake.