infinity

I was always amused by the fact that people are afraid of ghosts. And yet, they don’t know everything I know, so I tend to forgive them for some stupid conclusions and even stupider behavior.

I’m a little lonely these days, maybe that’s why I think about people so much. I can say that I even miss all those days when the castle was inhabited. And I really am a lot of years old. Well, actually, technically I’m still eighteen, but also all these 312 years since I'm officially died.

Somehow I already have a faint memory of my real life before this one I live as a ghost. Well, I guess that's the official term, at least that's what people call us, and then who am I to contradict.

Now you can imagine how much I’ve seen and heard all this years.

Admittedly, it's hard for anyone to imagine. It was hard for me too, especially at first until I realized what was going on.

I died young and totally inexperienced. Even if I was experienced, it wouldn't help me much, because that transition period was certainly difficult.

Even less helped were some childhood stories of how when you die you go to heaven or hell or wherever… even I just didn’t know what this was where I ended up in the end.

It took me years to realize how permanent this condition is, and in addition to changing the physical state, my circle of action narrowed a bit. I was stuck in that unknown castle for who knows what reason, and I didn’t even have anyone to help me adjust. So I was the only ghost in the whole huge castle. And that was weird, at least until I saw it all with human eyes. Not really, and it took me a few more years to learn.

I wandered a lot, what else was left for me. They lived their lives and I lived mine. It’s weird to call it life when I’m not alive. It doesn't matter, I'm quite used to it now.

Yes, the greatest human delusion is that their world and ours can collide. Even bigger so that they can hear us when something rustles or voices appear to them. What nonsense.

But in one thing they are right. They can feel us. I think that's the right word. Better said I can feel when we are sad. It’s the only point where we overlap, especially when they’re sad too then those feelings double.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of sadness in this place. Too much.

I may have died young, but what I have seen here all these years has broken my heart so many times.

There’s one thing I’ve never gotten used to. Dying children. And it used to be an almost everyday thing. In those long sad years, it seemed to me that we were all drowning in a sea of ​​sorrow. Both my people and me.

All these people were my people. I couldn’t take care of them in some familiar usual way, but I still considered them my own. I went through all those beautiful and less beautiful days and years with them. Until they died, and new ones came after them, followed by new generations…

Only, as time changed and people changed. Not just in terms of clothing or behavior or everything that progress has brought. Somehow it seems to me that people have become less and less "human" over time. It's weird to hear it from some completely insignificant spirit, but it breaks my old spirit a bit. It's just weirder to say, it just seems like I'm a little short of words to describe something.

My grief spread even more, though I realized that mine and their grief were different. They often mentioned love. And I heard about it a long time ago when I was alive, but I never knew what actually meant it. I didn't get to learn.

And all these years after that, I heard the word love from people in different situations, so they confused me even more.

The only thing I could judge by the power of love was sadness if it went out for any reason. That's how I realized over the years that love changes. That was the most tragic.

So as much as I missed people now, I actually felt better without them. The amount of sadness they have radiated in these last years has been almost unbearable.

So I could still wander through the half-ruined edifice and live from the memory. I used to be alone, in fact I had always been alone in my world anyway, and the sadness had diminished to a tolerable extent.

I’ve been looking forward to some ordinary things over the last few years. As the seasons change, as some creatures run out of the forest and play around, as mornings and evenings bring new colors. I still don't know how long I'll stay here. Maybe another day, a year, a hundred years or forever. I don't even care. My memories will stay mine forever. Although I lived a very short time, after that I learned a lot through my people and I consider myself happy to have met each of them.

I met them, even though they didn’t meet me. Not even those who suspected I existed there somewhere around them. It was not even necessary, our sorrows met and I tend to believe that I at least bit them a little and comforted them with these positive thoughts of mine. Although they didn't even know, they comforted me too. And that circle never broke, as long as they were alive.

And when each of them died, in any way, he took a part of me with him. I gladly gave myself away, but it seems that with the disappearance of people I will finally disappear too some day, and I finally realized that all this was just my piece of paradise…