My own transparent self

I don’t remember how I died. But does oneself really want to take a trip down memory lane, and summon up the dead? More specifically how they died? 

I don’t remember all the hurt and all the torture I had to endure before I decided to drastically take my own life. I only recall fragments of what happened, which lets me feel like being surrounded by a foggy aura all year around.

The glacial razor on my wrists. 

The endless blood trickling down my arms and amalgamating together with the unceasing tears that I shed.

I remember the pain. The relief. The darkness.

It consumed me, and I was put at ease as the black, dark and welcoming abyss overtook me. All my pain vanished in a matter of seconds. I was free.

Or was I?

I felt my spirit rise from my lifeless body, and I could feel an eerie atmosphere surrounding me.

I began to rise, but I never found the all-so-famous stairwell to heaven everyone is talking about. Instead I was confined in my own body again. In my own invisible body.

I never believed the mankind who said that suicide is a sin and will be punished. I just assumed that they only mentioned it, so people won’t commit such a tragic, unforgiving act. But that was on me. I should have done my research beforehand.

Now it’s to late to retrograde all of my steps and turn back in time.

My mind is now the villain in my story.

I am my own enemy.

Now I’m sitting alone in the dark, watching children run around with candy in their hands, dressed up as ghosts.

Dressed up as me.

The only difference is that, they’re just pretending, and when they get home, to their happy lidden houses, with their joyful families, they can just undress. 

Undress and forget.

Undress and eat the many flavored sweets they swept off of the people generous enough to give them some.

That could have been me if I would have survived another Halloween. 

But instead I’m watching from the sidelines, like a basketball player who knows isn’t good enough to play in the overtime, and instead is sitting on the beach knowing he will never be sufficient. 

I knew I was invisible when I was alive. But now that I am a ghost, people don’t even know I exist. 

I have no family to go back to when the night gets dark.

I have no family to share my Halloween sweets with.

I have no family. They have long forgotten me.

They no longer cry. They no longer mourn. They no longer dress in black clothing.

They act like I was never there. Like I never even existed in the first place.

They look past me. They look through me. I’m just a ghost from the past.

What’s even more funny is that, now I feel even sadder than before I took my own life.

At least when I was alive, I had hope.

Hope. Such a short word, and still the most meaningful reason I had, to be alive, well and standing.

For example. Christmas lights. Those colorful lights that are supposed to make you feel at home. To feel welcome. 

That’s the image I had before I lost hope. 

Because when I did lose the most important thing there is, those lights meant the complete opposite. I only saw a mask that hid the true horrors beyond those walls. Because after some time, those lights turn off. And you are stuck with the figure behind the mask.

The ice-cold truth, lost hope.

And I had faced it to many times to count. 

And I couldn’t face it anymore.

But Christmas is still a few, long months ahead. A few, many months of thinking about everything I did wrong. 

Doubting myself over and over again.

But those weren’t my thoughts of this very specific, creepy, eerie night.

My thoughts on Halloween mainly contain sorrow and loneliness.

I somehow, in a weird way miss being alive.

Being able to feel the wind in my hair, while running from house to house. 

The hard concrete that I felt through my worn-out shoes, and the slight fear I had of falling and scrapping my knees open.

The taste of all that candy. Oh, how I miss tasting the candy, which left the oh-so-sweet aftermath in my tastebuds.

I even miss the thirst for a drink that I felt afterwards.

The scary movies that always left me with a fright.

But now I only observe. I still go around from door to door, imagining, making up scenarios in my head of a different life.

A life where I could have been that one child, dressed up as a ghost, with candy almost spilling from my bucket. With lots of loving friends and family joining me. 

I could only imagine the sweet taste of happiness.

And that’s what I did. I imagined I was alive, only dressed up as a ghost. I visualized myself with a bedsheet over my head, and not as my own transparent self, that no one could see. 

I ran around, twirling, sprinting, without the fear of falling and busting my knees open. Without the fear of seeing my own crimson red blood, staining the dark concrete.

I ran past houses with their porch lights on, along with craved out pumpkins decorating the entrance. I was entranced by the candles shifting along in the wind.

I turn around as I hear a child laugh behind me, prancing around with his little werewolf costume on. I watched him for a while longer as he jumped from fence to fence, from garden to garden, from house to house, to get more sweets.

As I turn a corner, I see some teenagers throwing toilet paper onto houses who didn’t open the door for trick-or-treaters. 

That’s when it hit me.

Children are still kids, having fun without a worry in the world, and teenagers are still adolescents, who instead of facing their own fears, take it out on other people to make themselves feel better, or they keep it all bottled up until they are driven to kill the problem or kill themselves.

I have forgiven and forgotten, because that’s the upside of death.

You start to understand. To forgive. To adapt.

If I had to give a single strand advice to the living, flourishing people, don’t hate on others. It doesn’t make you feel better in the longshot, and the people who you tell such hatred things, may be scarred for life.

Like the scripture says: “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree.”

Understand. Forgive. Adapt.

The world hasn’t changed a bit since I left, and Halloween is still the only night a year where I feel like I belong next to the other ghosts.

With or without costume.