I See Dead People

A ghost of a memory can stroke the cerebellum, reach right past the defenses of the skull, and with ephemeral graffiti leave finger prints on the surface of memories.
With this kind of intrusion, how do we heal? Time is not necessarily the holy water needed to exorcise this spirit, nor is the eradication of passed/past memories even healthy.
I need my pain, it helps define me. Who we become is made up from scraped knees, not kissed cheeks. Yet some of these incidents so clearly grip me, I fear... Not the ghost of these memories, I fear who I will become. That what I will become will render the connections I have now to the people around me as... I don't know... Not obsolete but rather, the idea is separate. While I know I have to go this alone, and I have been, there are also times when I need help.
The events that took these memories and laid them to an unresolved rest, is perhaps why they now haunt me rather than heal me. Memories all lie to some degree in the graveyards and mausoleums of our minds. We visit them and lay flowers at their markers, respecting what they were.
So as events unfold that defile the graves of these memories, those past/passed events become poltergeist, looking for proper re internment.
I want to be strong, to be the black clad defeater of evils, the one who saves the day, for myself and for those around me. And many times and for some I am that person. Yet all my arsenal cannot grasp the now ephemeral nature of those events. Once known, and peaceful, now writhing, Dickensesqe harbingers asking for something...something...

It seems now that I need a hero, it is not to my liking, no man wants to be weak, though in my weakness I clearly observe my flaws and God's necessity. Surely this is the reason for the visitation and the ghosts apparent gaunt and gallow demeanor. To accent God's full and living pallor. Yet God's apparent lack of intrusiveness has lent the impression of dis concern. Leaving myself with the feeling no one believes in the specters I see.

Most people say that those ghosts aren't real, don't fear, it's the wind and the branches outside, yet these things are real. No illusions, not smoke and mirrors. Actual, corporeal qualities lend Credence (and Clearwater and Revival?) to the claim I make.

Real enough to be obvious to those who are not victims to the phantasmagorical display. In these scenarios, the bad characters get killed off, one by one, the good ones, beleaguered and bewildered, often blood soaked, make it out alive.

The "good ones"... when they are done... Then the cycle starts again... I am a good man at heart, I want to believe that, though like hard work or attractiveness one can not liberally douse themselves with those designators, so if I am...I am, yet in my experience, the humble and hardworking, the good, end up doing all the work, getting less credit, and are looked over till the end of the dance.

So I see my ghosts, and I know the cause for their unrest, yet to react to them will only cause me to be seen as crazy, or detract from the relationships I have come to cultivate as important.
To lay these bones at rest, to stop the walls from bleeding and the house from eating it's tenants I must then take these memories and love them. Hold them close and examine them, stare them down, as it were. Remember what was and is, rather than what I wanted or pretended. Though I am left with the uneasy feeling I will see all the clues in retrospect and hate myself now for my blindness then. As well as blame those around me for not speaking up before these skeletons grew phantom muscles and began to dance to their own tunes.

Granted these are feelings, not facts, I don't presume to place whole knowledge on what I do not know, and I wont make others feet fit the footprints to my mind's path imagined. Yet I haven't seen or heard compelling evidence to refute what I have learned, which is that prayer is coveted, yet highly ineffectual to assuage this haunting. Listening has been constructive, yet not connective. And at times the enormity of starting over, recreating a life...well it is unimaginable. Like a person coming up to me and saying,

"I have seen a ghost".