Dear Ghost

As I’m sitting at the dining room table with my laptop’s keys clacking and the dishwasher running, a bird is singing. I think she may be conversing with another, two lovers flirting in the dark. No good birds are usually up this late, speaking words that both mean nothing and everything.

But maybe I’m too quick to judge. These are the final ten days of the holiest time of the year. They’re more likely praising their most praiseworthy Creator or sending peace to His Beloved, peace be upon him.

Once, I used to be awake during these ungodly times talking to you. We’d text, we’d snap, we’d Houseparty. We wouldn’t talk deeply, we wouldn’t speak intimately. But like these birds’s melodies outside my dining room window, I found them beautiful. Mundane conversations that left me smiling, falling asleep with an almost-unnoticeable flutter in my chest.

We don’t talk anymore. 

Funnily, that song isn’t the one that reminds me of you. Praise God that with the month of Ramadan has come my abstinence from audio-depression. I had recently discovered Billie Eilish before this holy month and that “suicide music” would add greatly to my Power Trip and Somebody That I Used to Know feels trips.

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over.

You were never a good friend to me. Our friendship was mostly one-sided (as most of my friendship with girls are) and you didn’t treat me nearly as well as I treated you. My friends often pointed this out during the fact and when I’d gush over you in their presence. But I can’t say I treated you as well as I should have, as my friendship had an asterisk attached. That, of course, was my attraction to you.

My friends often ridiculed me for liking you. I won’t objectify you here and I don’t recall overdoing it back then either. Still, it was disappointing to me how easily boys become…boys.

I had an inflated sense-of-self in those two years when we were friends. I was cocky, but playfully harmless. Sexual, but uncomfortably inappropriate. I wish there were a way for me to talk to you, face to face, grab the misconduct-by-the-horns and apologize for the unwanted jokes and other similar remarks. If there’s one thing growing up has taught me is that there are lines one should not cross irrespective of self-surety and “no fucks given” attitudes. Even if I hadn’t learned this myself, #MeToo has made it abundantly culturally clear.

I write this tonight because of this concept of apology. Earlier tonight I was listening to This American Life, a radio program and podcast. The episode was titled “Get a Spine!” and began with an exchange on the title of this post, ghosting. But the first story was about some TV show creator apologizing to one of his subordinate writers for how we mistreated her as a result of his “attraction to her,” to quote his exact words.

Thankfully I was never like such to you…I don’t think. I don’t even remember why we stopped talking, why you blocked me on everything, seemingly out of the blue. What had I done leading up to that? What mistakes had I made? Why did you do it?

These are all the questions I’d ask you, dear ghost, if you weren’t but a specter in my life. But I firmly believe in not crying over spilled milk, so don’t pity me and neither will I. What happened happened and there’s no Eye of Agamotto and Time Stone to undo it. There’s no quantum realm or Pym particle or anything.

Damn. We used to talk about that kind of stuff. A lot.

Our Lord, grant us goodness in this life and goodness in the Hereafter and protect us from the punishment of Hell (2:201).

Perhaps goodness awaits for us on different ends of its spectrum, far away from each other and continually moving in the opposite direction. Perhaps I’ll see you in the Gardens of Eden, the Meadows of Primrose, under the Shade of God, where angels sing His praises instead of birds.

Like Superman, I don’t think you’re going to read this. But if you do, reach out. Neither of us knows who will die first; I’d rather we make amends in this life than in the next.