Haunted

Our second apartment was haunted. I don't have any proof, of course. I mostly base my determination of hauntedness on a feeling. A very strong feeling when I approached the end of our hallway and into the room Lennon was supposed to sleep in (but didn't, because, are you paying attention? IT WAS HAUNTED).

Eric doesn't buy it. The whole Haunting thing. Even if he had evidence of being haunted, he wouldn't really be scared. The only time Eric was ever truly scared of anything was that one time the guy he lived with almost killed him in his sleep. But ghosts and stuff? Those don't scare him, because ghosts aren't guys he used to live with who are former marines with black belts in Jiu-Jitsu, with days jobs as riot cops at Florence Prison. I guess if I was almost taken out by my killing-machine roommate for grabbing a shoe by the couch he was napping on, I'd get over less-concrete fears, too.

I, however, was not almost killed by Pedro the Riot Cop, so I will watch the beginning of a commercial for Paranormal State ten minutes before going to bed, and be awake the entire night, mostly because my bedspread looks a little bit like the characters' in the movie.

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What would you fear most about going blind? I bet you think it'd be the darkness. Or not being able to see the faces of your children. Or trying to relearn how to operate functionally as a human being, including the simplest of tasks, like walking or eating. You'd be mostly right, except that those things might only take some getting used to. I can deal with that, with time and energy and support.

What I fear most is the ghost of myself. Will it wander in my home, wondering why the TV isn't on, and why the books on the shelf are getting dustier every day? Will it keep me up at night, whispering about the career plans I dropped when I received my diagnosis. "Libraaaaaaarian.... it was perfect for you.... perrrrrrfect......" Will the ghost of myself want vindication, or just answers? Will the regret of not seeing Paris at night, when I had the chance, be so great that it physically manifests itself into flickering lights and floating candlesticks, still unable to fully grasp the fact that THOSE MANIFESTATIONS WILL MEAN NOTHING TO A BLIND WOMAN because the ghost of myself is kind of an idiot about those sorts of things? Will the ghost of myself haunt me for the rest of my life?

What are ghosts? Evidence of An Existence No Longer Presented In Its Former State. More or less. Everything that is not in its immediate state, then? The Me of two seconds ago is just a ghost. There is proof that she lived, right here in this sentence, but she is not the same. She is always changing. Always becoming, presenting herself as something new as each moment passes.

Holy crap.

We are all ghosts. Except when we're not. Which is right....nnnnnnnNOW. Crap. Its gone. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now.

I think I just got almost taken out by a jiu-jitsu champ riot cop of Self-Realization/Self-Knowing.

I am no longer afraid of ghosts.

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(Except the spooky kind that live under my bedspread)