Spooky days

I could pretend this is about Halloween, but the truth is less supernatural: my ghosts are still very much alive, and it doesn't take much for them to manifest around me. This week, particularly, they are all coming together. By pure chance, I should add. So I will approach this in stages, I'll deal with them one by one. Or at least I'll try to, as I haven't been able to properly deal with this for a year so far. But I digress.

For the sake of this exercise, I'll name them one, two and three, in the chronological order that they moved to the other side. We start with one.

One

I won't talk about what happened, because this has been discussed more than enough times. Both between us two, and on my own, with myself. All I want to tell you is that I am genuinely happy that you have come out of your shell. It gives me a smile whenever I see pictures of you surrounded by friends, living your best life, being a completely different person than you were when I met you. For real, I am happy for you.

But this is also a constant reminder that I wasn't able to give you that. That it was always there, inside of you, and I couldn't get it out. I failed on you and I failed in our friendship. Maybe I met you at the wrong time? Or maybe I was the problem.

So I'm keeping my distance. Which is ironic, as you're really far away. But I'm keeping our of your social media, I avoid looking at your pictures and following your life. It's better for my mental health. I feel a bit bad to keep you as a ghost, but I'm just not ready to face the idea that you're still very much alive. Now more than ever.

Two

I did not realise how much I love you until it was your birthday a few days ago. But I'm getting ahead of myself; we should start from the beginning: my birthday. I turned forty this year. That's a big one, some would argue the biggest one. And the actual day was a car crash, which is why it was so important that you were there to celebrate with me when I had a party. But you couldn't make it. I get it, life happens, plans change, things don't always go the way we expect. 

But then, silence. No message, no phone call, no mention of celebrating with me later on. You didn't even ask me to make an effort to travel and come see you to celebrate my own birthday - which I would have. And you kept giving us excuses and never showing up. You just vanished from my life, you vanished from Yogi's life, you vanished from Brighton. And then, in the middle of the summer, you just showed up completely unannounced, and completely unrelated to any of us. And you made no effort to hang out. 

That really hurt.

And then you vanished again. Then it was your birthday, and I decided to send you message. You told me you were not feeling great. So, in less than a second, I abandoned everything I felt for the last ten months and asked you if you wanted to come over and hang out. If you needed support. And I genuinely meant it. All my feelings went aside without an inch of hesitation to support you. And I don't regret it. This is how I am, this is how I was built. But you declined, which at this point is no surprise anymore. And now you'll probably disappear again, and my heart will keep on being broken. 

You are the one who hurt me the most, because I never expected this from you. So, for now, I'll keep pretending that you don't exist. It's easier for me to keep you as a ghost, cause when you're alive, I have a tendency to get hurt because of how much I care about you. And how much you see me as a ghost.

Three

We could all see it coming, because it happened before. In fact, your life is filled with ghosts. Your past is a trail of people who became dead to you, and the more I got to know you, the more I understood why. So, after a while, I knew the death of our friendship was a matter of when, not if. To be fair, it was pretty much frictionless, which was a big surprise to me. I was expecting some drama, and the drama never happened. We just stopped talking. Maybe there's a reason for the peaceful death: I once read that one's divorce is the reflection of one's marriage, and our friendship was a peaceful one - mainly because of how good I am at letting things go.

The truth is: I don't want to be friends with you anymore. Your importance in my life is undeniable, and I would not even dream on forgetting it. The part you had in my life will never change, and I will honestly be forever glad to have had you as a friend. But that friendship is now dead. I can look back at it and appreciate the memories, but I know it will never be resurrected. And it's better this way.

I could spend the next paragraph listing all the reasons why I don't want you in my life anymore, but I know it and that's enough. I'm not that kind of person who would badmouth you in public, even if I'd be telling the truth. No, there's no need for that. Instead, all I'm gonna say is how you're not dead to me. If I see you out, I'll be civil, I'll say hi, I'll even congratulate you when your birthday comes. But it will not go further than that. 

And I hope you become a better person. I hope you learn from your mistakes and I hope your next friendships are better. I truly do. I don't care if you think I'm only saying this to try and be a bigger person, because I honestly don't care about what you think. I just want to move on with my life and for you to move on with yours. In different planes on existence.