I’m a living ghost story.

Or at least that’s how it feels sometimes.

I’m not entirely sure how to pinpoint exactly when it happened. I used to think I knew. I was timing it based on roughly the last time I’d spoken to my mother, which was nearly four years ago. But old social media posts show me that I’ve been on this journey of self-liberation for much longer than that. So now it feels much fuzzier, much like a metric fuckton of my memories do to begin with.

I often think – and lament to my therapist – about how most of my life is practically unknown to my current circles of friends and loved ones. In an ideal world, people have common threads that they can follow unbroken with other people, connections that strengthen over time without fraying. They have friends and relatives they can reminisce with, find companionship and solace with based on shared experiences.

I’ve never lived in an ideal world. I think about how my childhood lives almost exclusively inside my head now. Sure, I share what safe tidbits I can find, offer up the few cute anecdotes I’ve got, but it’s not the same as it would be if they had been there too, if they had known me then. The fact that my isolation is self-imposed and by design – the fact that I’ve cut those threads myself, that I’m holding the scissors – hardly dulls the pain.

I rescued myself from toxic narcissistic abuse, and I’ve had to make exceedingly difficult decisions along the way. But one of the most agonizing parts of the process was turning myself into a ghost story. There are many people I’ve had to leave behind in the wake of my escape. I often wonder if they ever think of me, and if they wonder why I vanished. Even if I could safely reconnect with them and find the strength to explain, I don’t know if they’d understand.

So I stay gone, and I haunt the only one who’s left to haunt – myself.