Apparitions

I did it. I raised my hand. I spoke. In a two minute monologue, I allowed the words to come pouring out of my mouth and into the air, carried away and quickly vaporized. No one knows me there. Well, they know of me and about me and many of the elements of 'me' but they don't know me.

As strange as the aforementioned statement probably sounds, it makes sense to me. Being a member of this secret society, flanked by celebrities and everyday joes, one foot in the spotlight and the other in the shadows I realized that there are people in my life who have remained as much of a stranger to me as I am to these people.

For many years, I have known someone whom I have realized is almost a complete stranger to me. As I come clean with my life and as I discover more and more of who I am, clearing up the wreckage, dissecting the past and living in the present, I have awakened from a dream. Smoke and mirrors. It sounds more magical than it feels. I am to this relationship as Robert Angier was to Albert Borden's 'Transported Man:' obsessed. One thing at a time, one friggin day at a time. I removed the job that was tearing my insides out from my life and now I move on to the next department. The next set of boxes. The next reel of tape.

Often times, taking a strong inventory of life and relationships is tedious, gut-wrenching and achingly humuliating. I guess that is where I stand now. After a few years, you think that you know someone. After ups and downs, good times and bad, you think that you have some insight into their personality, their mannerisms, perhaps even their thoughts. Hell, you even go so far as to assume that if they have stuck around this long, if they have trudged through the mire, gone to the trenches, reached out to you and stayed in your life in some fashion alllllllll of this time, that you know something, you feel it, you understand them. As tough as it was to admit to myself in the last few days, I have experienced much with this person, taken a few hits and threw a few punches of my own---as tough as it was, I admitted that I do not know him at all.

How does one spend years interacting with someone (YEARS!!!!) and not know them? Why would I have believed that he was in it for the same reasons as I, that he felt similar feelings, thought similar thoughts? 'Why' is a stupid question. 'Why' is a waste of energy. I am not sure, but I finally had to wake up from the dream, come out of the fantasy and into reality. I had to cut through the smoke and break the mirrors, whether it costs me seven years of bad luck or no. Angier, give up your obsession for it is a young man's game. Nicole---give up your obsession. Wake up from your dream and see him at face value.

Sometimes, we create the story. We derive the fantasy and we construct it to suit whatever we need it to be. Sometimes, people are strangers, but only because we refused to see who they really were the entire time. There is a ghost of something that was that I have chosen to allow to continue on its haunt for a long time. Having to perform an exorcism is not something I want to do, yet is something that I must. I reach out to the 'good book' with apprehesion, reservation...simply because I have never performed the ritual. I have forgotten the steps. Who am I really kidding. I had come to love this ghost and his hauntings; I had welcomed him continuously into my inner world.

Obsession is a young man's game. Obsession is also tiring, both physically and emotionally. Right now, I'm all tapped out. When I sit back and think of it, like Angier, the method to the trick he sought so feverishly was right before his eyes the entire time. It was simple. The real person, not the apparition has been in my life the entire time. It was simple. I simply chose to create the fantasy.

Letting go will be the hardest part, severing ties the most painful. I'll miss that damned 'ol ghost. No trap doors here. No escape plans and no more chasing the apparition. You are free to go now. You are not needed here anymore. I really wish it were that easy. A part of me still loves him.

I guess old habits die hard.