Only Living Ghost to Grace the Hall

Today is my sister's 18th birthday.


I wrote her a long letter, last night. Sort of in-re to a letter she wrote me a few weeks ago. Her's wasn't that long, to be honest, but it was. Illuminating, I suppose, if you'll pardon the Lizzie Bennet reference. She said that I loved her when no one else did. Said that it would've been easier for me to have hated her at certain times.

I hadn't been aware there had been a time when she hadn't been loved.
And now that I know otherwise, I'm sad.


I didn't actually give her the letter, though. Just filled a store-bought card with compliments and adoring alliterations. I'm beginning to think that I'll hardly ever send a letter in my life, but will probably write some on a weekly basis. Which sounds lonely, in a way. But there's not many other options.

I didn't give her the letter because it talked about certain things regarding the relationship between my father and I, especially in contrast to my sister's relationship with him. I told her- the letter, I mean, about how there was nothing all too personal in my father's attitude towards me. How, though we allegedly appeared to be thick as thieves, there was never much interest in my personal hobbies. There was never an overwhelming amount of support for who I was and what I thought. The best memories I have of my father are always with a beer in his hand, wrapped in one of the many beer cozies I used to knit for him. It's memories full of watching his favorite shows and listening to his favorite songs. It's comforting him, placating him, listening to all of the things that went wrong at work that day.

Him, him, him.

And so I came to the realization, in my letter, that my father never admired or even vaguely liked me for who I am. Simply liked the person I became in his presence, the favors I gave him without being asked.

Then I started thinking about someone else in my life.

They've been favoring me as well, lately. Which is not something I object to on principle, per say, so much as I object to biased or unfair favoritism. Which is almost always the case when it comes to people favoring me. And then I realized that the only reason this person likes me is because, like my father, they're projecting on me: Straining their eyes and blocking their ears in what must be an exhausting attempt to see themselves in me.

Those who favor me are Narcissus, and I am the creek.

Which is. Illuminating? No, that gives too positive an impression. Depressing. Explanatory. Hollowing- not hallowing. It makes you feel hollow inside, makes you start pinching your skin and staring into your reflection and waiting for your eyes to glint like glass. It makes you want to rap your knuckles against your chest and wait for the inevitable echo of an empty room. It makes you wonder who you are, what's unique to you, what proof do you even have that you're a person? An "individual"? How do you know you're not just raw clay, a mirror, a creek bed, a blank screen ready and willing? How do you know? How can you prove otherwise?

And then, in an empty room on your sister's 18th birthday, you start to cry. Because you are no one. There's a chance you never really were. And for all the ways that your sister is stunning and sweet and lovely and kind- you're just a knock-off desperate to please. And you feel the heat prick your eyes and see your blanket blur into blobs of color and you clutch your pillow until your knuckles pale, bite your lip until the metallic tang of blood floods your mouth, squeeze your eyes shut until the phosphenes blossom into being like alien flowers against the back of your eyelids. You think of mirrors and creeks and empty, crumbling rooms, and then.

You think of chameleons.

You think of how they change color, change appearance and seemingly their existence, to survive, endure, to live. You remember the first time you learned about chameleons, how amazing it had seemed, how vaguely discomfiting their pyramid-shaped eyes had been. How they could see every motion in their vicinity, how slow and sure-footed their own movements were.

And the phosphenes recede, your fingers relax. You prop your pillow back against the headboard and straighten the blanket. You realize that the best way to handle a weakness is to turn it into a strength, and this is the kind of strength that you could turn into a super power.


(You always did look good in spandex)