308. A Living Ghost

She understands that to get better she has to allow herself to move on. There is no other way. She can’t live forever in the trauma of her past. She has to build a new life for herself. She can’t afford to go on caring about what was done or even who it was done to. That person is not her anymore. That person is also in the past.

Every day she tells herself to let go of the idea that the past matters. She is letting go of caring about the past. She is letting go of caring itself. She has been actively reminding herself of these things. She is discovering slowly that she is becoming more capable. Her methods are working. She no longer feels as much pain, and that must mean she’s healing.

Free of pain, she is able to do more. She can go to work and earn money and live well. What does it mean to live well? She thinks it means being able to survive on her own. It means not having to rely on others. It means especially not having to rely on anyone who could hurt her.

She likes living well. She likes it even though her world is now more solitary. She likes it because there’s barely any pain and sometimes she even feels pleasure. That has to be a good sign. She thinks it means she’s doing the right thing.

But there are also moments when she doesn’t know what life is supposed to be. Or what it is supposed to be for. She can go on living well, but she doesn’t really care about anything or anyone, and she isn’t entirely sure she cares about living either. Not that it matters though, because she is letting go of caring. And if it doesn’t matter then she can just go on. Dead or alive, it’s all the same in the end.

She is functioning without pain and that feels most important. It doesn’t matter that she has lost her connection to the so-called real world. It doesn’t matter that she has lost her concern for other people. She has given up caring about these things. She is a ghost now. And most of the time she’s fine with it.