I've been meaning to write to you.

 
Who are you, ghost friend? Are you the forest, the sea, the tiny, pretty things you can buy in the city for cheap? Are you the books, the paints, a warm home cooked meal? Are you the lost letters, the lost days, lost chances? Have the past few years been any indication at all? 

A few things I wish you are not: the spineless who cannot keep one’s word; the slimy who destroys without batting an eye; the ungrateful yapping with yet another complaint; the greedy who rots in an illusion of power... the dirty rat running around the room – scared, ferocious, small. Never be one who follows blindly.

In the past couple of years, fate has forced these many roles upon me. Who are you, then, my ghost? In Mary Oliver's Upstream, she writes, "In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be...

"With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them."

Contort yourself, break your back, twist your limbs, view yourself in the lens of others, or so they say. Never be one entrapped into such conditions of worth: Are you not loved if you are not the direct reflection of good by those who raised you? Are you not liked if you are not the perfect sidekick, never complaining, always strong, always wise, always serving some purpose? Are you not worthy if you cannot perfectly play the roles assigned to you, mostly as an extension of others? The trick, perhaps, is the acceptance of these roles but to not succumb to them ultimately. Because ultimately, it's about being a human, isn’t it? Not just one role in one linear story ‒ like in a book or a movie. You are alive, not a nacre on a stone, alone, unfaceted, and fine.

On being human: I will not let life just happen to me ‒ I'll respond to it wholeheartedly, sincerely. Living life is like a conversation, in that you listen and you give. I will also not force life to happen in ways I desire (and what is it that I desire?) ‒ it's almost impossible to swim contrary to the flow of the river. Nature has its own laws. Life happens outside and beyond us. And life includes us at times that it sees fit. I will respond to what life offers the best I can; I will dance to its rhythms. Dance, not just sit idly by.

This year is the epilogue of another decade in my life. Infancy to teens, they were hardly ours. The twenties were borrowed ‒ between these roles, such heavy coats, and the emerging self. I hope the next ten years or so, if it is ever given, shall be mine to partake in, to cherish, to share. And to see face to face with you, my ghost friend.

with love,

abelink