Let's call me LivingWithGhosts. I'm eighteen, female, and I live in the rural United States. I love learning about history and I write all the time - short stories and a historical fiction novel about pirates that is eight years in the penning. My father is a Vietnam Veteran and due to his exposure to the defoliating chemical Agent Orange during his service in the war, both he and I have severe, chronic health problems that keep me home-schooled. I love the written word and listening to music and I try to be moral, polite and respect everyone, particularly the elderly. I don't have many friends, I dislike the main-stream, I believe in God, adore wolves, have synaesthesia and a form of colorblindness that prevents me from differentiating red from brown.
But none of that is what makes me interesting.What makes me interesting, is that I live with ghosts. And you're about to meet them.I don't say this in jest or as a game. I'm not talking about something pretend or people that wear sheets and throw things and moan. I'm perfectly serious and if you're willing to open your mind just a little and believe in things that you may have never believed in before, read on.
When I was five years old, I started getting memories. Memories that weren't mine, memories of terrible things, things I couldn't understand at that age. I knew what it was like to go through things I had no knowledge of. I knew wars, I knew disease, I knew death. I didn't understand what was happening to me, I didn't know why I was dreaming these terrible things again and again. But I did.
And then one night, a man came with the memories. He was a soldier and his name was Alan.
As a child, it never occurred to me to doubt the legitimacy of this. I had dreamed of his memories of war and he had come to me. I was too young to know of different wars and conflicts and sides. I was too young to know that the helmet he wore marked him as a 'doughboy' from World War One or what being a Lieutenant meant. But even at that age, I knew that he was real. I didn't have the reaction of an adult: I believed him. And I was right to. He had been born, very much a real, living person, into this world in 1891, he had fought in the War and he had died. And then he had come to me, as he had come to so many other people throughout the years, to serve as a comfort, as a teacher, as a guide. He was all of that and more. I called him 'My Soldier.'
I would learn, later, as more of them slowly began to arrive, that I wasn't alone in this. They've been described over the years as 'muses', 'imaginary friends', 'angels', 'reincarnations', 'voices', 'ghosts', 'memories', 'spirits', even multiple personalities. I believe there are some people with Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID) who are, in fact, visited upon by the people of the past and do not realise it. They are bringers of knowledge and comfort -- if you have ever suddenly known how to do something you didn't before, without ever learning it, or if you've ever suddenly felt like you understood something you had no cause to or were comforted in an hour where you felt utterly alone, then you may have been visited by one of the people I call 'room-mates'.
There are fifteen of us now, including me, and I'm not certain we've reached our maximum, though there's no predicting their arrival. They are from all periods of time and all places, they are male and female of all ages, they speak different languages, they have different accents, different views and religions and ways of moving and speaking. They are unique and they are real.
It is, always has been, and probably will always be a challenge, living with them. They are perplexed by a modern world and frustrated with living in a body that is foreign to them, that may not, indeed, even be of the same sex. They seek to be individuals in a body that can only be one individual at a time. It is hard for me as I struggle to accomodate their wishes, as I learn from them, as I care for them and help them through their lives. I have their trauma, their memory, their sorrow, but also their laughter and their light. Despite the struggles, they are wonderful people and I would not give them up for anything. They are my best friends, my teachers, my parents, my everything. Growing up, life was not always easy; it was rough at home, at school, there were people who didn't understand, who hated me. This has been their, and my, secret for many years.
And today, I share it with you...I hope this blog will be a place for them to express themselves, to talk about what weighs on them most, to finally be heard in a world that will not accept that they are anything but figments of my imagination, who will not accept them as someone other than me. The internet allows all.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy meeting my best of friends.
Benedicite.
~LivingWithGhosts
