There Are Ghosts Everywhere

There are ghosts, and there are ghosts. Ghosts are everywhere! But I’m not talking about the chain-rattling variety. I’m talking about the brain-rattling kind. The people that were once in our lives and are no longer.

There are all kinds of people that haunt us. The friends and lovers of our past live on in the parks, stores, and common friends of our present. “Here’s where we used to sit and talk. Here’s where we used to shop.”

And what haunts one person is invisible to another. We are continually walking by the touchstones of joy and pain for others without knowing it.

Who are these ghosts? Who can be a ghost?

Not just anyone, but those who truly captured our hearts. The people we told everything to, the ones who did not judge us, the ones who believed the best of us, the ones who made us laugh.

And when they leave, whether it’s because of geographical distances that can’t be bridged or philosophical differences that cannot be reconciled, does that change the fact that once these people were friends? Does it legitimately call into question the tenor of the whole relationship? Or is the friendship now sealed in amber, a beautiful memory?

And what about returning ghosts? The ones that we thought were long gone, who had left our lives for whatever reason, only to return? Do they return to the position you’ve been holding in your heart for them? Or is a new spot created? Do they now have two places in your heart?

The ghosts in your life, do they divide your heart, or add onto it?