Those who know me will recognize that I can tend to be elusive - a ghost - for the very purpose of not being known.
There are periods, therefore, where I will be less communicative; I will less likely be around. My absence can indicate some sort of cognitive clouding, a pulling away from opportunities to express what is on my mind, a retraction into myself due to some person disassociation.
Yes, it is true. I, like most people perhaps, attempt to hide my sadness. Whereas I have long dreamt and wished for the fulfillment of having another being to completely satisfy an innate yearning of empathy and compassion, I have simultaneously refrained from opening up as a form of self-preservation.
In the instances where I have mistakenly believed that I had found such a person, my tendency toward self-preservation had been further strengthened by the act of disillusionment; broken trust, a broken heart, the irreparable damage of being left behind, and perhaps somehow worse, the cold apathy experienced in a state of emotional vulnerability.
It is interesting to consider how more generally inclined our psyches are to holding compassion, patience and kindness toward those visibly impaired, whether it be psychological or physical disability. Anecdotal evidence rather proves this. However, why is it that when another being, not so as aforesaid disabled, experiences sorrow, suffering, and general weakness of spirit and mind, our threshold to compassion is so different. The latter soon becomes an emotional liability; to put it simply, putting up with their suffering becomes a pain in the ass.
I am as guilty of this as the next person. I will have been found to have sighed in exasperation and said, 'Get over it, already!' You know you have. But where is the line? That which differentiates a petty bout of complaints versus a long-standing promise to be there, no matter what?
For said reason maybe I hesitate at being that burden. The funny thing is, I have a chronic psychological phobia of being left behind by someone I have invested emotionally in -left behind not just in the physical act, but being displaced cognitively - and yet once I have opened up, that's it, that person's capacity to deal with this not-so-strong, not-so-independent girl evaporates. Catch-22, in a way.
The list of these experiences is longer than anyone could ever know, longer than could be known by even the one person in whom I placed everything, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, personally, on the basis that finally I found the elusive soulmate.
But maybe it's not just elusive. Maybe it just does not exist.
Right now I am broken and still breaking. And I admit this, the girl who would rather die before admit this. But I am already a ghost - unseen, unattended, invisible- after all.
