Ghosts. I have wrestled with ghosts. The toughest problems are the ones that don't exist — the hugest ones you have only imagined into being. It's so hard, though, to look past them when they seem to be everywhere in your face. Ghosts won't let you alone once they've been set free. Plus, that which is imaginary is notoriously difficult to defeat; they return after having been beaten down — out of the dust of their remains (once they've been soundly dispatched), they regroup, reformulate, reiterate their attack. And you'll never be able to pin a ghost down, never get a straight answer from any of them. They are as mysterious as one's own desires.
Even if they never were, those things with which I have fought against — sometimes winning, sometimes losing — in the struggle, I have gained. If these memories are of nothing at all, I am the stronger for having striven so — even if, in the end, it was all just me against me.
Laney
7:21pm wednesday, 14th august
I just watched "A Beautiful Mind" last night. Have you heard of it? About the genius mathematician who had schizophrenia -- i hope i spelled that right. Anyway, he really did have a beautiful mind. And I think you do too. I fight all the time against those ghosts you talk about. I am as I'm writing this. But, somehow the way the wind moves through the trees comforts me in a euphoric way. Sometimes I just have to realize that life goes on. One horrible step at a time.
--Laney
Gabrielle
12:50am saturday, 24th august
Ironicly, "ghosts" are how my schizophrenia began. I never knew that they were not actual ghosts. My family urged me to believe that I simply had a strong connection to the spiritual world. Twenty years later(and I'm only 30) I am finaly realizing that I can control the horrors that I once so painfully lived through. Thank God that my "ghosts" have now been put to rest.
Laney
Gabrielle