Mortui Vivos Docent (The Dead Teach the Living)

I died when I was 17. I did not have anything as fanciful as a eulogy, or even the least, a funeral. When you die a death like mine, you barely get a final resting place or the roses placed around your place of final rest. Your grave smells of moss and other things that begin to grow. Some that I had never experienced in any of my 17 years of existence. A premature end, no one present to piece the stories together or to narrate the life and times if any. Comfortably in my grave, sitting there for the last couple of years, I decided to script a story of my own. Of the things I loved and the things I lived for. Of the things that hurt and those that brought a ton of joy. As I await judgment, I jolt down my eulogy, who would know, Mortui Vivos Docent, they say. A perfect narration of all my archetypes those that were seen and those that I only knew. Those that I role-played and those that actually existed. A beautiful coming to age, illustration of a dead girl's persons, shadows, animus, and selves.

The past couple of days leading to my death, I experienced all my lasts. I waved at my best friend for the last time on the subway. I took my last scoop of ice cream. Watched my last sunset. Journaled for the last time. Opened page 179 of my favorite book, The Game of Kings and Queens. I did not even get to the climax of the story. Does Anthony get to sleep with Isabella at last? I walked to the bus one last time. Ate at my best restaurant where I warmed those chairs past midnight. Unbeknownst to me I would never get to sit there again and listen to the bold girls my age sing at the open karaoke! I kissed for the first and the last time too. I would have wanted to re-experience that. Unlike how I read in books and watched on TV, my first kiss was not the kind that moves worlds. No! Byron sneaked into my room during a sleepover and went straight for my mouth. Not my lips in particular. I was concentrating on breathing and finally falling into the heavenly moment I always heard of. He moved from my mouth to my cheeks then my forehead and then my ears where he left a trail of heavy wet saliva that stank like onion dips. I wished I was dead there and then, but oh well, here we are!

Much time has passed. Time down here moves weirdly slowly. I barely have a sense of time or space. It is pitch dark in here and I cannot hear a thing either. I guess I am in the zombification phase although I can neither feel my face nor my body. My mind has been awake, more awake than ever before. I remember things, I think about things and I can count. I can tell that if I am not mistaken or if I did not get into a wild sleep that I did not know about, I might be 23 years old now. It has taken me 6 years to pay tribute to myself. To write to me and to relive my life and times only in paper and pen. I know you are wondering if I am a ghost but I will definitely get at that.

I am 23 years old now. 17 human years and 6 years ghost years. I lived a short but full life. Full of love. Most of which I gave and less of which I received. I loved the color orange and brown and green. From my knowledge, those colors were grounding and mostly earthy. The colors resonate with unsophistication. Just simple and straightforward. How I had always been. I loved the sky and I watched it more than I looked at the earth that I walked on. I craved nights of a full moon or a crescent moon when Venus was somewhere reaching to touch the moon’s face. I watched the night sky through my broken window and countless times I would tear a little at the wonder. I loved flowers as well. Specifically Roses, White roses. I did not get the delight to enjoy receiving a bouquet of flowers although I planted them myself and they never get to the flowering stage. Things like stars and a deep orange sunset gave me goosebumps. I craved a partner who would love me in all my silliness and my nerdiness and who would not mind taking a long walk in the middle of the night to nowhere just to enjoy the quiet of the night and watch the cloud cover the moon. And we would kiss until the clouds had passed. Oh, to dream! I loved small portions of food. Less meaty and more fruity. I loved baggy clothes that did not draw too much attention and glasses so that no one would ever know that my eyes are golden brown and innocent for the most part. After 17 years I learned the piano in theory and I always failed in practice. I wrote endless stories and letters to lovers that only existed in my mind. I hopped from loving strawberry ice cream to vanilla then chocolate at one point and back to vanilla. Always the girl who sat at the corner of a room or at the back. I talked less and listened more. I read and psychoanalyzed people like I was mental but that was just a part of my becoming. Life was beautiful. In all my 17 years, life was everything I wanted it to be.

How did I die? You might be wondering. I was sitting outside. The clouds were rather dark. Not too dark for a storm yet not too light for a single ray of sunshine. I walked into the house and was swallowed by my bedroom door to a portal of neverendingness. My phone was lying on the floor and so was my favorite dress. I could barely get in bed without at least falling on a pile of clothes or stepping on food from last night or the other night. My curtains were always closed and I had pulled my lights out at least a month earlier. I had not journaled or lifted a book to read in weeks. I had not left home in exactly six weeks. I could feel this dark cloud of dysphoria growing inside of me and consuming me every single day. Nights got wistful and scary and the war between the light and the dark did not stop until I let the dark win one day. It was no longer just a dark cloud looming behind me, it had consumed me and in that moment, I stopped to simply exist. I failed to recognize myself, or my eyes, or my face and I was a walking, living image of nothingness. I died once and again every single day since. I was a pedestal that sat in the middle of the air, never falling down, but never rising either.  Roses became just a bunch of bushes. Vanilla ice cream became just another thing that I hated. My bed became the breeding place of all my demons, whenever the devil nutted in my mind. Sunsets ate my eyes out and stars only reminded me of how tiny and meaningless I was. I dug my grave every day that I woke up and every night that I went to bed.

I dug it deeper every time a part of me died. Every time I lost yet another friend, every time I became a shell. I went beyond six feet and dug and dug until I stopped to exist until I became a ghost.

A ghost so privileged, I walked the earth with the rest of the people.

A ghost so tormented, I got to wake up and dress my dead carcass and get to live among the mortal.

A ghost so timeless, six years and I am still dying a little more every day at a time.

A ghost seated at her grave waiting to see which one of the archetypes of the shadows, does her mind want to role play today as she malevolently desires to be invisible and to be swallowed by this very bed. This very grave and eventually have her last bid, Aeternum Valve! (Farewell Forever).