Ghost Writing

I came across this in my "Things I've Written" folder on my PC just now. I really remember very little about writing it. Perhaps I've tried to forget it or perhaps I've tried to remember? Who knows? Anyway, this is another bit of me. Not the silly, funny Bertie who acts the fool and always says "No problem" but the Graham who sometimes weeps inside, just like everybody else and, just occasionally, writes seriously. I'll leave you to decide just how much of this is Me.

Once upon a time there was a boy. He had a childhood of, what he thought, normality but it was only much later that he found out that it was a stifled childhood. A childhood that didn’t have a lot of love, just a lot of being made to feel guilty if he wanted to be a child and make the mistakes that a child makes. A childhood where he was always told to put others first, to be seen and not heard and that he should be grateful for even the smallest concession to his naivety and lack of experience of life.

He was always told that his best was not good enough, that he could do more and that he was letting everyone down by his selfishness in wanting to be a person in his own right.

That set the pattern for the rest of his life. He was always able to go so far and then something else took over. Call it Fate or coincidence or whatever, but whatever it was he would get so far and then the rug would be pulled out from under him. Maybe it was self-sabotage because he knew that something would go wrong eventually and he wanted to get it over with. Maybe it was a punishment for all the things that he had done wrong in his life. Maybe it was just ……..Life? Anyway, he reached a point where he realised that he was the wrong side of the right age and that he could never get those years back again.

He started to think about those lost years and the mistakes that he had made. He started to get bitter about the way others had treated him and about how stupid that he himself had been. He had spent his adult life just like his childhood - allowing others to control it and being too much of a coward to change things. His brain was strong but his emotions were weak and he sank lower and lower.

His self-esteem disappeared and, with it, the strength to pull himself out of the pit he was in. He was told to make an effort to get himself together but he couldn’t do it on his own. Drugs didn’t help. This was more an illness of the soul than of the mind. He had people that liked him and were willing to help to some degree but, sadly, he couldn’t accept that he was worth their effort. More importantly, they were not people who could touch his soul. He was like a blind man who was being offered a helping hand by other blind people. They couldn’t lead him to where he was going because they themselves couldn’t see the destination.

There was one in particular who wanted to lead him. She was not blind but previous experience had given her a distorted view and she did not necessarily trust what she was seeing. Because she was unable to trust the evidence of her own eyes, the man was unable to trust her leadership in his time of trouble. They got to a slim cliff path on the way to his destination and she tried to pull him along with her. He doubted her motives and therefore dug in his heels. She had two choices. She could have won his trust or she could have shamed/bullied/coerced him into following her. Neither worked, he was too scared of what lay ahead and, being unable to see, made him even more so.

They battled. Because she was sighted, she did not realise the terror that blindness gave. Because she had others who could reach her soul, she did not realise his loneliness. Because she had purpose, she did not realise the effect that failure had upon him. She remembered a recent failure of her own and her reaction to it. How she had felt that her world had ended and that she was no longer able to do her job and that everyone was pointing a finger at her.

He tried to explain to her that, if she felt like that, could she not in some way understand how he felt a failure in the biggest exam of all - life. And, most importantly, there was no retake.

He had lost her. She spent her time telling him all the things that he did wrong, making him feel guilty and really reliving his childhood all over again. He didn’t blame her for all of it. He deserved some criticism but he felt that whilst he was able to admit to his mistakes and human frailty she did not. Maybe she could not. Maybe she couldn’t allow herself to admit to being human also.

Anyway, there they were on this cliff path. She couldn’t guide him so she gave up and tried to push him. Even he wasn’t that stupid! Who wants to feel their way forward knowing that one false move means the end. So there he stood. Alone, unable to move backwards, incapable of moving forward.

He is at a standstill and there we must leave him.

Perhaps one day he will find the person or the courage or the motivation to take those first tentative steps. If he does, he might still fall but at least he will have tried. But then, he had tried before ….