How to Write a Ghost

Dear Monica,

I write. This is my calling. If a good story insinuates its way in my head I feel obligated to follow it wherever it leads. My father had a stroke a year ago. Thankfully, he had a nearly full recovery but it got me thinking about the past, about things I’d mostly forgotten, people and events I’d blocked out because the memories were impossible to face. Not because they are awful memories, but because they were beautiful and beauty is fleeting. We touch beauty when we are young and it brings us to life like vibrant color moving through our veins. And then the beauty flees like a startled wild thing and we are left standing in an unfamiliar wilderness, alone. We grow cynical, more protective of ourselves, stop seeing colors as vividly, tighten the straps on our mask. I do not think we miss places and people as much as we long for the ability to feel deeply again without fear. We mourn the loss of our own innocence, we condemn ourselves for ceasing to be brave and open, capable of loving deeply without concern for oneself. I am speaking of myself as well as billions I will never know.

My father had a stroke and it led me to write about my life. I came to understand that I had to write about something I really didn’t want to face again: Losing someone I loved. But, it is a beautiful story and it is my calling to tell stories even if they emotionally tear me apart. When I was 29, I was involved with this woman I found incredible in every way. Just a gorgeous human being inside and out. I fell for her completely but it wasn’t the right time. For three months, though, there was this profound beauty in my life and it changed me. I opened myself up to it and it was an experience I do not regret. I lost her, it devastated me, but most of us experience such things; eventually we move on a little more scarred. Hardened. Last spring I understood that I had to write about that amazing woman I knew when I was 29…I also knew it would be the most wrenching writing project of my life. I listened to the music I listened to when falling in love with her and after our relationship ended. I had to put myself back there, where I was when I felt what I felt for her—I had to fall for her and then lose her again. It was a few weeks of typing and crying which, surprisingly, is not as attractive as you may imagine. If I had to sum up the experience in a sentence it would be: “I forgot how much I loved you, how deeply I could still feel back then; I was simultaneously falling in love with you again while understanding I will never see you again.” Utterly wrenching. I am working on the third and final draft right now. I read each sentence aloud and keep having to pause because, once again, I am crying. Sobbing, really—

But this is my calling, it’s what I do, and it is resulting in the best writing of my life so I am happy to endure this.

And I am greedy, greedy for these times I can feel so deeply again, both positive things like love for another person and more challenging things like losing people I have loved deeply. The years have hardened me, as they often harden people who have reached middle age. I lament it, but also understood it was necessary to survive. To continue writing. 

When I was 29, I was involved with this incredible woman who loved both the poetry of John Donne and Doogie Howser. Who drove a sensible Toyota Corolla…but it was a stick shift which intrigued me: A practical, thoughtful woman…who understood the pleasure in getting lost in the experience of moving through the gears? She was equally gracious and complex. This person was probably the love of my life and I will never see her again. But there is beauty in loss, in the memory of places we have been and things that have touched us that we will never feel again.

Always,

Z