Nightmares: Ghost

Hello!

Life: Week 1 of Summer School part 2 has been mostly review of psychology concepts I'd encountered before, but will definitely need to review. I'm excited for both of my classes (Cognitive Psychology and Philosophy of the Mind) even if both of them look like a lot of reading. I'm also struggling to log in research hours. Basically my life can be summed up in the following to do list:

1. Need to make better use of the time I have. 
2. Need more time. 
3. Need to have less things to do. 
4. Need to wake up and stay up when the alarm rings. 

Albeit, #3 will probably not be a problem if #2 were possible, and #2 would be much less of an issue if I could just resolve #1. And that might be possible if I could actually do #4. So basically: 

1. Need to make better use of the time I have. 
2. Need more time. 
3. Need to have less things to do. 
4. Need to wake up and stay up when the alarm rings. 

The basic idea of summer session-part 2 XD

This next writing part is about nightmares, fortunately not the sleeping-kind though.

Nightmares: Ghost
Another microfiction this time, written for the 100 Themes Microfictions group for the theme Nightmares. I took it a little differently, as a personal nightmare--a feeling that I hate feeling and am quite afraid of feeling.

Ghost
WC: 230 

It’s back.  

An all-encompassing fear and darkness roots itself in my chest and the hollow in my gut pulls and wretches me into an abyss of feeling.  

I surround myself with friends and acquaintances, making sure I’m never alone, even if I’m just walking to class. Yet the fear pervades: a darkness pure and pitch that makes me lonely, even if I’m always next to someone. I feel like if I’m by myself too long though, that I’ll be forgotten by—or I’ll forget—the people around me. And then I’ll cease to exist in their minds, so much that I’ll no longer be seen. I’ll just vanish. I’ll be a ghost—living yet unseen.  

 I explain in a small whimper that the feeling comes from a baleful root that’s anchored at the pit of my stomach and wrapped all the way around my heart. It’s the same substance that makes me not hungry, even if I haven’t eaten. After all, ghosts don’t need to eat.  

The whole feeling makes me very friendly, very desperate to be remembered. Desperate to be someone in someone’s memory. But the root curls around my heart, paralyzing any force I try to exert. I am shape without form, shade without color, gesture without motion. I am from dead land, from cactus land. I am a ghost, consumed by loneliness in a crowd.

This was written based off an inkfeather* that I wrote during one of those times that I just felt lonely. I'm actually quite happy with it, considering it didn't honestly take that long to re-write. Also, it references my favorite poem: The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot. "Shape without form, shade without color/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion" and "This is the dead land/ This is cactus land" are the direct quotes used in the last paragraph. 

*(Inkfeathers are what I call random little bits of writing that I do while out and about. Just little things that I write in my commonplace book to capture my emotions or whatever's going on. My idea was that eventually I could piece a bunch of "feathers" into a story-bird. XD Ink is a motif in my life--I call everything  after "inks")

Process

My process took the original inkfeather and rewrote/ expanded it. This turned out to be more than the 250 word limit for the group's microfiction, so I revised it and then cut it to less than 250. The only difference between the final revision and the cut is a small part before the current last paragraph. So after "After all, ghosts don't need to eat," would be this: 

...After all, ghosts don't need to eat. People don’t believe it though. 

“You’re not like me,” I protest weakly.  

“Can you be any more selfish?” And I realize what the acidic burn on the rim of the loneliness is: selfishness. It’s not just a lonely feeling, but an egotistical one that sours the air if the darkness. I try to laugh it off, but the sound stings. ....

This is another part of the emotion I felt, but not directly connected to the feeling of "becoming a ghost" that the microfic scene focused on.

I also just noticed that while I refer, to myself, this emotion as "the little cold feeling in my heart", I never mentioned in the microfic that it's cold. And actually, if I look back, the original inkfeather didn't mention the cold either.

Luckily, whenever the emotion comes up now, I usually just attach to my friends for a few mopey days and throw myself into schoolwork and writing. By the time I come up with a good few pieces of writing, I'm back to my usual cheery self :)

Next week: I'll post my writing plans next time; let's see if I can also stay on track enough to post a River Windrose descriptor scene. :)