Irrepressible thoughts of death just hit differently when you’re a ghost, I suppose.
I didn’t dress up to see the movie – didn’t coordinate my mask with my outfit, didn’t wear pink, didn’t pose in a box. I mean, aside from having a hard time showing up in photos and mirrors, I’m not opposed to any of that. It’s just that I’ve misplaced my womanhood, never knew manhood, actually don’t really understand what either entails, and yet still have a hard time with the color pink and knowing how to dress myself without feeling like I’m taking sides on the non-existent gender binary.
You’re probably thinking — stop subscribing to antiquated ideas of gender norms. Aren’t you a ghost, anyway? Yeah, yeah. My gender crisis seems a lot less important these days now that I’m swept up in questioning my general corporeality.
I know, I’m rambling — but it’s hard to come out as a ghost, you know? Especially with a coming out story like this, nonsensical: one minute I was walking into a movie theater, and the next, depressed Barbie and probably-queer Barbie have me tumbling down a rabbit hole of remembrance. Spoiler alert: I happen upon the fact that I died 10 years ago.
Okay, it was a little less cut and dry than that, and I think whatever happened in the movie that triggered this unearthing is oddly specific to yours truly, but the thought spiral began with the saccharine Do you guys ever think about dying? and just took off from there. Driving afterward, alongside my own standard, irrepressible thoughts of death, a hazy memory was forming, something pink and frothy, like the blood and bones of armadillo and raccoon decorating IH-35. Once home, I worked myself up to getting rid of the wasps in the backyard, a necessary yet unbearably sad task. And as I soaked the small monsters and their home in poison, watched them blur into focus and irreversible stillness, I saw myself newly reflected in their lifelessness.
It is undeniably embarrassing that remembering I’m stone-cold dead took me this long. Sure, there were signs here and there: like the photos and (lack of) reflection, the way I’d have to speak extra loudly and concentrate hard to be heard, the way I could walk in and out of a room with no one even noticing, being touch-starved and needing crushing physical closeness to feel real/present/alive. (Anyone else out here ever asked your partner to fuck you back into being?) The belief that if I really wanted, I could glitch out of this very world; and the times where reality became so hazy it felt like it didn’t even apply to me — those should have been obvious indicators of my spectral state.
More embarrassing is the fact that now I remember dying, my death isn’t even that interesting! My sincerest apologies if I’ve been teasing up to some grand reveal, some unsolved murder mystery. There’s not much to report, other than I was responsible for un-aliving myself. The event itself was spontaneous and cringe. I remember the frat house with House-of-Leaves- vibes, except more misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic. The too-big-on-the-inside building only allowed those perceived as girls inside — promising our underaged bodies intoxication at the low price of groping hands, of skirts pulled up, of smirked apologies smelling like liquor, echoing you can touch/you can play/if you say ‘I’m always yours.’ We went there because we were told we should want to, told that we had to — in order to get swallowed up and spat out at the club down the street — in order to sedate and subdue and submit ourselves to fingers and tongues and more and the pretense of intimacy. Okay, generalizing isn’t fair, so I’ll speak for myself. That’s why I was there, stifling my queerness, cramming myself into the container of girl-thing, offering myself as sacrifice to the only god I knew back then. A silent prayer for oblivion and desirability.
That night was the same as any other. I walked into the shadows, the sticky floor, the cliché breeze of beer, piss, unwashed dishes, and semen, into the gaze of what could have been three – or could have been a million – men. Men I could not recognize, yet knew had been with this body. I walked in, I felt dirty, and I drank, and drank, and drank. There was nothing different about that night, there was no plan, had never been, not really, just an awareness that with the swallow after swallow of cheap flavored vodka (birthday cake? pineapple?), I was tossing my body to the wind, to the gods. I was allowing myself—finally—to throw myself away.
Yes, I can see the words unfurling in your head: I’m a basic bitch who drank herself to death. No offense taken, it really was just that simple. I was there for all of 10 minutes, wandering off with friends to hit a spliff before the poison hit my bloodstream. I felt both carefree and finite, and we continued our walk to the bar, the night clear and refreshing, until everything became obscured and unnamable. I would’ve liked to say I had seen death come for me, the butch godexx of my dreams or some heavenly cyberpunk femme, otherworldly, ineffable, and understanding. I would’ve liked to say I saw the gates of heaven or Persephone beckoning me, pomegranate seeds falling like drops of blood as she waved, call me by your name filtering through. But I had no fanfic-worthy demise, no smoldering grim reaper. Instead, the night just calmly pooled into my mind, the world closed itself off to me, and with a sharp drop in my belly, I knew that I was dying.
And then, I woke up. My mouth was already in motion, so I paused mid-syllable, disoriented, opening my eyes to a hospital attendant, and a self-introduced Spanish translator. My Spanish has never been beyond toddler level – I must have been speaking in tongues. It dawned on me that although I was surrounded by vomit, fluorescents, and tangled up in a mess of wires, I also was most certainly deceased. I kept telling the attendants this — but they all just stared at me blankly, unbothered. They had other priorities, and ghost patient-care was not one of them.
After the hospital, faces would crinkle up, concerned, when I told them about the whole being dead thing, and they’d gently deflect. Perhaps it was too uncomfortable of a conversation, too jarring. They also never quite seemed to catch what I was saying – which should’ve been a ghost red flag, too. I was too much of a people-pleaser to push the subject, so over time I just stopped talking about it, worn out by the stares and sympathy, and started feeling less sure of what I knew. I stopped googling “I’m questioning my corporeality,” and “How do I know if I am a ghost?” With time, I just forgot – blanketed up the memory and left it to dust.
Until I saw Barbie, and everything went spinning. Silly, I know. You would think working a 9-5 where I literally talk all day to people about the ways they escaped a death of their own making, something would’ve jogged my memory sooner. But I always just chalked up the flickers of remembrance to empathy and clocked out for the day. So somehow, a lifeless doll choosing to be a living, breathing human (and ironically, mortal), got things to click for me. And what now?
Remembering feels painfully tight, like a migraine spilling out behind my eyes, but I know that what’s to come will feel infinitely worse and more anxiety-producing. People always say coming out is a process, is a lifetime occasion, but I exhaust the search engine, and there’s no information for how to come out to your platonic and romantic loved ones as a ghost – or how to tell them that the whole thing’s your fault entirely. What should I say? “So, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I see dead people when I look in the mirror (it’s me, I’m dead).” Or “You know that horror movie that gave you nightmares, well, funnily enough…”
Also, ghostliness is so underwhelming, and dare I say, heteronormative. I always thought if I was going to be something supernatural I’d at least get to be something a little queer-coded: a vampire or werewolf, mothman, a fairy even (even if it’s a bit on the nose).
Tell me — how do I tell my lover, my love, that every time they kiss me I feel a bit more solid, a bit more real, but that they are also fully exempt from any responsibility to tether me here? How would you tell your chosen family that you’re not the person they thought you were, not entirely? That you’re not all there, or that you may not even exist, at all?
I guess this is me, trying.
p.s. I’ve heard that All of Us Strangers has good ghost representation and a nuanced coming out story, so I may check that out.
p.p.s. If you have ghost-identified, or at the very least ghost-allied therapist recommendations that do sliding scale, please hmu!