Josh's story

We went to cemetaries last night to write. Cemetaries don't really frighten me, as I believe that all those bodies are just piles of rotting organic material. The souls go somewhere else. Anyway, I wrote this, and it is probably the most honest thing I've written in quite a while.
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Let me tell you a ghost story that will make your hair follicles harden and turn your arms into winter orchards. Let me tell you the story of teh real ghost that you should fear.
The ghost is a boy. He is tall, which sandy hair and diamond-cut eyes. His hands feel gentle and strong when they hold yours. He is quite handsome, you would say, if you saw a picture. If you saw him with his hands around a dark-eyed girl you might almost believe in him.
He takes advanced placement classes in school. He is very smart. His test scores carve him out from a large society and sculpt him into an elite one. He reads philosophy and the classics. He devotes himself flawlessly to academics. He is on the scholastics team at school. He loves chemistry, and measuring things, and empirical evidence.
This boy dances to trans, some hybrid of techno music with a beat as fast as your heart, and plays video games with his friends. He goes to church every Sunday. He is popular and well-liked. Ties hang on him effortlessly. The wants of girls dance piroettes within his peripheral vision.
He works at a fastfood restaurant. He makes ice-cream cones perfectly, down to the top that curls down onto the softened layers. He saves his money for college and so he can serve a mission for his church.
He likes to get things done. He relishes his own productivity. He knows that someday he can be an asset to society.
This boy likes most food, but not egg or potato salad. He has freckles and his eyes still see his surroundings with 20-20 vision.
I know what you are thinking. "This boy is not a ghost," you tell yourself, "He is just like me, or anyone else." You are both absolutely correct and terribly wrong.
All of these things I've said are true. The problem is that this boy defines himself by them. He defines himself by how many hamburgers he can make in an hour, and how well he can do on tests, and how popular he is. He has built his identity on what his teachers and friends say, on the way his slightly-thin frame manipulates the mirror. And because of this definition, something that has been happening unrecognized all along has consumed him and spit him out as a phantom, a ghost.
You see, he works because he is afraid of the horrible things he does to himself when he is not busy. He bases his self-esteem on his hamburgers because without that productivity he cannot even fathom how he will love himself. He relishes his popularity because when he is with people he has an identity. He is terrified of being alone. He tries to do well on tests becasue he fears that he is really stupid and worthless, and the tests are the only way he can suppress those fears. He saves money and exists in the future because there is no way he can exist or be happy right now. He believes that if he works hard enough or goes to school long enough or makes enough money he will find happiness, or at least a justification for the oxygen he utilizes, becasue he has no kind of happiness and feels guilty for his existence.
This is the way it has always been, but something is happening now. All of those things that he uses to define himself- grades, work, friends- have fallen away. He can no longer maintain his reality, and it is crumbling. He is realizing the transience of everything in his life. He is realizing that there is nothing past the surface. Now he has no reason to love himself and every reason to despise himself. Now he keeps busy to keep running from all of his fears. At his very core he fleeing in terror from the center of his being. He is drinking and cuttnig his arms and overdosing on drugs. He is trying to kill himself, but he knows and has always known the truth: there is no real, permanant escape from himself. He cannot run forever, and he is getting tired, slowing down.
He has quit caring about everything. He finds it difficult to even breathe, even though his body does it for him. He knows he can't find his identity in that body anymore. He believes taht once everything is gone- all the friends, jbos, and grades- once it has all fallen away and he reaches the center of himself, there will be absolutely nothing there, only the vestigal wreckage of his universe. He cannot fathom why anyone would love him.
See, you are half right. Perhaps he is just like you, or anyone else. But he is a ghost. He is a ghost that can beat any of your campfire stories. he is a ghost that can frighten you more than any unquiet spirit or restless zombie. He is the ghost you have always been afraid of because there is a part of him in you. Let me tell you about a ghost. Let me tell you about a boy who is sobbing all alone in his room right now because there is no escape, and he's told himself that he doesn't care for so long that he is beginning to believe it.