Ghost Tea

Come home. Is it home anymore?

Shower. As if it mattered.

Eat the first few items from the pantry that she touches. Taste doesn’t matter.

Boil the water for chamomile tea and steep it in her favorite mug for exactly 2 minutes. Hope it helps her sleep tonight. It never does. She makes it anyway.

Sit and watch the television, tea in hand. The tea’s herbal scent is supposed to be soothing. It only serves as a painful reminder. But she sips at it anyway, indifferent to the taste. It doesn’t matter.

The flickering light of the television in her room is the only one illuminating the darkness. She prefers it this way.

The show doesn’t matter if it’s distracting enough. Watch whatever comes on mindlessly. Do not think too hard about anything. Don’t think at all. Thinking only brings pain.

Ignore the ghost in the corner. The one who sits there staring at her, sipping on his tea mug. Always ignore the ghost. It’s just a figment of her imagination.

The routine is the same every night. She allows no deviation from it.

Go to bed and try to sleep. It is the same almost every night. She cannot sleep, and when she does, never for more than a couple hours. And even then, her sleep is plagued with the same nightmares. And she wakes up screaming.

And still ignores the ghost in the corner.  It follows her through the house at night. Staring at her, with an expression that she refused to decipher. The ghost tries to talk to her, but she won’t listen.

She tells herself he can’t be there. It isn’t possible. Ghosts don’t exist. It’s just her stupid imagination. It must be.

She manages to sleep. Just a little. But her sleep is once again disturbed by her nightmares, where she relives everything that she’s tried to forget. She doesn’t want to remember, but at the same time she doesn’t mind. She deserves to have nightmares. It was her fault. All her fault.

She wakes up screaming again, twisted up in the blue comforter that feels like restraints. It takes her a full minute to take in her surroundings and realize it was just another nightmare.

“Just a bad dream,” she whispers into the dark room. She forcefully wipes the tears off her face. “You’re fine.” But she knows better. It wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory.

Her alarm clock blares, startling her from her thoughts. Time to get ready for another day.

She walks into her cubicle at work two hours later, the largest cup of coffee she could find in her hand. She spends the morning sipping it delicately as she works on her computer there. The work is difficult and requires a lot of concentration, but she doesn’t mind. It keeps her mind busy.

She almost works through lunch, before her friend shows up to surprise her, insisting on going to the new restaurant in the shopping block across the street. She doesn’t remember what it’s called. She doesn’t care.

She orders something simple and bland. Her stomach would rebel otherwise.

Her friend chatters endlessly until their meals arrive, and they dig in. She endures her friend staring at her until they finish their meals.

She sighs. “What is it? Were you sent to check on me?”

Her friend gives her a sad smile. “Of course. You haven’t been in contact with anyone. They worry. I worry about how you are.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “You don’t need to worry.”

Her friend snorts. “You’re my best friend, Kira. You can’t fool me. I know it hasn’t been that long, all things considered. But you look like hell. You are anything but fine.”

She looks down. “I’m trying. I’ve put myself on a routine. I can cope if I stick to it.”

Her friend peers at her closely for a moment and grabs her hand. “You need help.”

She takes her hand back, crossing her arms over her chest, shrinking in on herself a little. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Not buying it. You need to talk to someone, even if that someone isn’t me.”

Like the ghost that always stares. She thinks. “I’ll think about it.”

Her friend nods, satisfied. “Good.”

She is back in her cubicle again. Typing away at her computer, occasionally stopping to sip more coffee and complete other tasks. The time flies and before she knows it, she is in her car, heading home.

Come home. It’s just a place to sleep now.

Shower. Why does it even matter if she’s clean?

Eat the first few items from the pantry that she touches. Who cares if it’s gross when it serves its purpose?

Boil the water and steep the tea for exactly 2 minutes. It won’t help her sleep, but she keeps doing it anyway.

Sit and watch the television in her room, tea in hand. Ignore the scent and taste. The hurt will never leave anyway.

Turn off all the lights, so that only the flickering light of the television illuminates the room.

Try to sleep. Why bother? It’s pointless anyway.

All while ignoring the ghost in the corner. He isn’t real anyway.

The routine carries on every night after work. Always the same. Except for now. When the ghost has become more determined to not be ignored. She tries anyway.

But now he won’t let her. He floats right next to her now, whenever she is home. She sees him trying to talk to her, and she starts to believe that maybe she can hear him. But she tells herself it isn’t possible. Ghosts aren’t real. He’s just a figment of her imagination.

And so, she continues to ignore him. And he continues to haunt her.

Maybe she deserves this. Maybe she deserves to be haunted by him. To see his face every day, never allowed to forget. Never allowed to move on. It was her fault, after all. If she hadn’t…no, she couldn’t let herself go there. Nothing good would come of it.

She finally has enough of her friend’s badgering one day and agrees to see a therapist. It takes a few months of weekly sessions for her to open up to her therapist and begrudgingly agrees that talking to someone helps. So, she continues to go.

It takes months of weekly sessions for her to begin feeling anything but numb again. To start seeing the world as more than just something that she happens to exist in. But she fights it. She doesn’t want to feel again. It hurts too much.

One day she tells her therapist about the ghost she sees at home. How the ghost either just stares at her or tries to talk to her. She thinks she’s crazy.

Her therapist disagrees. “Kira. Grief comes in many forms. Seeing the ghost of a loved one is normal. You’re not crazy. You’re grieving.”

She nods but isn’t sure she believes it yet. “I don’t know. What am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever you want,” the therapist says. “Listen to the ghost, maybe talk to the ghost. Maybe the ghost is there because you can’t let go. Or continue as you have been and ignore the ghost.”

She spends some time mulling that over, vacillating between the options listed to her, before she shakes her head. “Wouldn’t it make me crazy if I did talk to the ghost?”

“Not at all.”

“What would I even say?” she asks.

“Whatever you want,” her therapist replies. “Whatever you feel the need to say.”

She nods. “I’ll consider it.”

She spends the next few nights still ignoring the ghost, although she thinks seriously about the idea of talking to him. His staring feels different now, and she starts considering that maybe her therapist is right.

It takes another two weeks before she begins to stare at the ghost at night, and she notices that the ghost has started to fade a little. She considers this and realizes that he started fading and being less obtrusive in her nightly routine when she started feeling better. She doesn’t know how to feel about this.

She comes home one night to find the ghost almost completely see-through. If this keeps up, it won’t be long before he’s gone. A sudden wave of panic washes over her. She’d gotten so used to the ghost being there. What would she do once he’s gone? Still, she cannot bring herself to speak to him.

One night she comes home and is halfway through her routine when she realizes that she hasn’t seen the ghost yet. She looks and can’t find him anywhere. Panic seizes her before she sees a flash of movement on her back porch. He’s there, waiting for her, almost completely faded. She stares at him for a moment, and then finally brings herself to speak to him.

“You will be gone soon.”

The ghost nods at her.

“Why?”

The ghost stares back at her for a time before answering, “It’s time. You don’t need me here anymore.”

“I’ll always need you.” She doesn’t bother with wiping her tears.

The ghost shook his head. “You are better now. It’s time for me to go now.”

“Why were you here?” she asks.

“To watch over you, make sure you would be ok. And you are now.”

She shakes her head. “I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry I ignored you for so long. We could have said so much. But —”

“I understand. You were hurting.”

“I’m sorry I got you killed. I wish every day that—”

The ghost shakes his head, “It was my choices that led to my death. Not yours. Mine.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

He fades even more. “Live. Move on. Let me go and fall in love again.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You will.”

He’s gone before she can reply. She lets out a sob, something she hasn’t allowed herself since the funeral. When she manages to collect herself, she goes inside and goes straight to bed, breaking her routine for the first time.

She wakes before her alarm and starts her day early, when all she wants to do is curl up into the covers and never get up. She considers calling out of work and taking a day or two to sit and process. The ghost was gone. He was gone. She never thought that he would leave her again, even in ghost form.

She waits for the numb feeling to set back in, because she knows that it is the first way she always tried to cope with emotional upheavals. But this time, it doesn’t come. This time, she is forced to feel. She spends the day like this, switching between crying uncontrollably and staring into space. She decides that feeling the emotions isn’t so bad.

She tells her therapist about her conversation with the ghost. Her ghost, she realizes. He was hers. Her therapist listens patiently and then asks her how she feels now.

She takes time to reflect on it, trying to put her emotions to words. “Not as horrible as I expected I might be,” she finally murmurs. “It hurt in the moment, when he completely faded.”

“And now?”

She takes a deep breath, “It still hurts. It feels like I’m losing him all over again. But… I woke up this morning and I felt like I was going to be ok. Like I can breathe easier. Before it felt like I was drowning some days and barely staying afloat others.”

“Would you say that the pain is not as…crippling as it was before?”

She shrugs, “I guess so, yeah. It’s one way to put it. Does that make me horrible?”

Her therapist shakes her head and gives a small grin. “Not at all. It means you are healing. And that is always good.”

She comes home that night feeling perkier than she had been. She is healing. She supposes that that’s what her ghost wanted from her in the end, since he disappeared when she started feeling better. She still doesn’t think she can move on just yet, but maybe one day she will.

She decides to take the time to cook a meal, carefully choosing specific ingredients for the first time in months.

After she eats, she sets her trusty kettle on the stove to boil, something she hadn’t touched since her ghost faded away. Once the kettle lets out its whistle she steeps her tea for exactly 2 minutes.

She sits down on her bed, tea in hand, watching the television as she takes in the scent of her tea. The herbal scent and the taste of the chamomile tea still serve as painful as a reminder as it is soothing now.

All is not well. But in time she thinks it will be.