The Ghost Within

"We fall in love with ghosts."
- Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient and Divisadero.

Suddenly single. Or, in a relationship with me. Undefined. Alone. Happy. Sad. Hopeful.

Things fade quickly in the world of love. A mist that burns off in the heat of the day. We meet, we dine, we laugh, we make love, we... well, we don't always share in even the most intimate of relationships everything that makes us who we are. Our pain, our wounds, our fears, our struggles.

We are ghosts who fall in love with ghosts. We are, to the world around us, only a partial picture. The unseen picture is a mystery to others and often even ourselves.

Love, for all the songs and books and movies and preachers who try to define it, is still a vast sea of air that is unreachable, unfathomable, uncontainable. We ride its currents. We love its stillness. We are devastated by its power. We view it as both savior and demon. Like air, we are innately drawn to it, feel like we're drowning when we lack it, take it for granted when we inhale and exhale without thinking.

Love, for all the songs and books and movies... is the ghost that no one has ever seen and at the end of the day, leaves everyone wondering if it exists at all.