Haunted

It's been so long since I've spared more than a few moments to think of you...You often cross my mind like spots floating in my field of vision, unsure if they are really there, unable to focus on them, yet somehow unable to see anything else.

I force myself to think of you now. To remember you. To experience the moments we shared with one another as if they occurred not years ago, but moments ago...not to recall the feelings of happiness or joy, but the feelings of sadness and disappointment. Not to recall your smile or laugh, but the look of indifference in your eyes and the sound of tolerance in your voice.

I wanted to take from us all the wonderful things you taught me, but you also left me with something I've never taken the time to identify or qualify, and over the past week I've had a constant reminder just how powerful it really is. You were the first person, and thus far the only person, I've ever just been me with...The crazy-stupid, wacky, funny, illogical person I want to be when no one is looking, except I wanted you to see...To know that behind the responsibility and the seriousness, beyond being proper and trying to be a role model, I wanted to be my own person, and could be my own person, with you.

For the life of me...you didn't think it was stupid or dumb. You made me feel safe in being myself. You accepted me for me, and it made me feel that much better about always being that way with you. And yet, in the end, it wasn't safe. In the end, for a reason still unknown to this day, it wasn't okay. Now that I think on it, taking the time to truly examine it, as open as I try to be with everyone I meet, as honest as I try to be, I can only remain so if I feel safe in the knowledge that what is truly me is still hidden and shrouded in obscurity...and although there are times when I lapse into actually revealing a bit of myself I so desperately try to withhold, I take comfort that it is only one piece in an otherwise unclear puzzle.

Over the years, I've come to feel that I'm a fairly open and honest person, choosing to share a lot of my thoughts and feelings with almost anyone, and more with those I have come to grow close to. But I've come to find out...that that really isn't the case at all. It's a paradox - I begin my relationships open and honest, unabashed about how I feel or what I think, and yet the closer I feel to someone, the more they learn about me and I of them, the more cautious and standoffish I become, often pushing people away before they can learn of my fears and desires, my prayers and my hopes.

I never knew it...but I'm haunted by the pain and sadness of truly opening myself up to someone, and I'm afraid to do it again. It's not my *greatest* fear, but it is ever-present in my subconscious. Perhaps one day, much like Casper, there will be a way to set me free of the ghost of you. fyh