The Ghosts

I recently finished this 99 cent Kindle book called Gravity Vs. The Girl. In the book, the main character, after a year long episode of depression, gets confronted by four versions of herself. She sees the versions as ghosts, and they all want something different. It’s made me start thinking about my own ghosts and how who I was in the past affects my decisions now.

The main character in the book has a ghost of herself as a child, who wants to ride her bike over this gorge in her town. I don’t think I have a ghost of my child self, because my childhood was close to perfect. I ended up getting all the things that I deeply desired. I had a best friend, two parents who loved me, and I wanted a sibling more than anything–and I got one. I joined things and was accomplished and creative and a genius. If I do have a ghost of me as a kid, it wants me to have one of my own, since it’s the only way I can come close to reliving the best part of my life.

The Middle Schooler – Middle School Cloudy wants me to belong, and to look good doing it. Middle school was not a positive time for me. My best friend moved away, and I was stuck in a world where everyone was suddenly mean and being smart was the worst possible thing you could be. I had one friend, who would get mad at me all the time for getting better grades than her but since she was my only friend I couldn’t do much about it. I used to daydream about having friends, and in these daydreams I’d be saying “No no no!” to them and they’d be listening to me. I thought that’s what friends were–people you could say no to and they’d listen. It didn’t help that I thought I was ugly, and it really didn’t help that I had no idea how to put on makeup and pluck my eyebrows since I was the daughter of hippie parents. It’s the Middle School Cloudy that helped me get so good at eye makeup over the years (and I can cover zits like it’s nobody’s business) and who helped me lose weight a year ago. She begged me to stay at my old job in my old city, a place where I belonged with friends I could say “no no no!” to.

The Teenager – Add the ghost of 17-Year-Old Cloudy, a Junior in high school, having one of the best years of her life. The Teenager wants two things: 1) a boyfriend. 2) to live in the city. She pushed for the move to the greatest city in the world, arguing that I’d basically exhausted the dating scene in my old place. My love for skyscrapers? That comes from her. She also loves sidewalks and convenience stores and being able to walk to convenience stores on the sidewalk. It was The Teenager Cloudy who got terribly sick of living in the country, a half hour drive from school and all her friends, and on a street with no sidewalks. Teenage Cloudy wants a boyfriend but doesn’t have the best taste in men: at 17, I had a crush on 1) my married science teacher and 2) my South African art classmate who was dating a girl I really didn’t like. So this ghost wants me in bigger and bigger cities and to go after men who aren’t any good for me. Sometimes I even listen.

The Hipster – The Hipster ghost just whispers into my ears to make decisions that make me seem more cool. She really wanted me to move into Shorty’s room (The Teenager said no–it was too far away from anything). It was cool. The Hipster thinks my current job makes me seem cool and interesting, and convinces me to “invest” some of my newfound money on my newfound interest in fashion. “We couldn’t afford it then!” says The Hipster, on my hipster days. I’m not sure if this ghost is ever leaving. Once you’re a hipster, there’s always a bit of hipster in you silently judging your Spotify playlists.

The Poor Girl – My first real job paid very little, and I could barely afford my apartment, my student loan payments, food, and transportation. My credit card was always maxed out, I learned how to squeeze through the metro gates behind someone else (because it was either that or pay the faire and not get lunch, lunch often being whatever I could get from whatever coins I had). It was hard. I was miserable. The ghost of Poor Cloudy t is from the time after I’d decided to move into a group house to save money, and before I actually did that. This ghost’s main values, money and family, may seem a bit odd together, but given how I was at the time, it made sense. I wanted more than anything to move back to my hometown (I missed my family quite a bit) but I couldn’t afford to do it. The Poor Girl and The Teenager have very different goals. The Poor Girl had recently broken up with her former fiancé, so she’s more against anything involving romance. Poor Cloudy convinces me to search for jobs back where my family lives every once in a while.

There might be another ghost, from my time in Cap City at my previous job, but that one’s new, and she’s just started following me around, and I don’t really know what she wants yet. It probably has something to do with being unrequitedly in love with your best friend. I also think this ghost might be telling me to get laid. Mixed messages much?

New Things: I was close to being fired but have a meeting with a recruiter tomorrow. More on this in the future!

*Wondering if I wrote about this in my previous blog or not.