Ghosts, zombies and other stories that keep us alive
It’s been an awful, draining week.
All I can do is state the fact and try to move beyond the quagmire of repetetive thoughts — and write.
What a relief it is to write, to let thoughts find an outlet. Finally.
I have been in communications long enough to have tried every strategy to get a message across. Short punchy straplines; articles strategically structured to convey specific information; social media posts paired with eye-catching visuals; presentations that take hours to make simple, elegant, minimal, good enough for a bold statement.
And still, communication remains elusive — admired by many, possessed by few. If you have one of those few in your life, hold on to them dearly.
This week someone disappeared from my life as abruptly as they appeared, leaving behind unanswered questions, hopeful feeling I’ll have to pack away as “lessons learned”, and, most painfully, a cascade of old experiences reawakened by one person who otherwise occupied very little space in my 41 years.
Our brains are complex in their wiring, but simple in their processes: what I have known in my past, I replicate in my present and seek in my future. The stories I tell myself are the only consistent whole I conceal within an otherwise chaotic universe. So, for the sake of consistency, to stay safe from an unknown that offers no guarantee of being better, I seek, I find, repeat.
I am not always this pessimistic. I wholeheartedly believe in change and self-development – relentless, time-consuming, hard as they may be.
This week, in search of logic and camaraderie in my disappointment, I found myself googling ghosting, zombieing and other activities the undead of our lives impose on us, usually without explanation or empathy. I wasn’t really looking for answers; I was looking for stories. Flawed, human experiences from either end of the ghosting spectrum, narrated somewhere on the web for people to find, read connect to. Stories of the human condition.
I did not find answers, nor did I really need them. But I found stories, and they relieved the loneliness that comes with disappointment, the quiet isolation of a consistent self trapped in its own chemistry.
Lately I have been thinking how much of our human experience we’ve let be reshaped by marketing rules and social media formats — short attention spans, dopamine hits, endless scrolls. We’ve forgotten how to tell stories for the sake of expression itself.
About a week ago, an old friend and colleague who helped me set up this blog reached out. They mentioned re-reading old posts and wanting to talk about them. There it was again, the invisible but ever-present string of connection that stories create.
I have been a musician, I dabbled in photography, filled sketchbooks with forgotten drawings, but writing has never left me. It’s kept me sane and functioning through unnamed depressions, paralysing love, fear, happiness, frustration, and everything in between. Reading other people’s stories of sorrow and disappointment to comfort my own I thought: perhaps it’s time to start writing again.
*I don’t have a picture of a ghost or zombie that I can take credit for, so here’s my 2023 Halloween decoration. Spooky enough.
