imhauntedby

[imhauntedby]

I’m Haunted By… the Silence That Still Rings Loud

There is a silence

that echoes in the spaces between words—

thick, impossible to ignore,

like a room emptied of air.

It was there in the long pauses

after I spoke of my pain,

when the hush said more than any reply.

It wasn’t peace.

It was absence.

I’ve felt it in conversations stalled,

in friends who didn’t ask how I was doing,

in therapists who only checked boxes.

That silence was a judgment,

a blank stare that screamed:

Your suffering isn’t worth our time.

I carry its weight in my throat,

a stone lodged where compassion should be.

I taste it in my mouth

when I reach for comfort and find none.

That quiet taught me to swallow my voice,

to fold my edges inward,

to believe that my story

wasn’t meant to be heard.

But now, when I sense that hush creeping in,

I let it be a signal—and a challenge.

I fill the spaces with my own words,

my own truths,

even if it rattles the room.

For every silence that tried to bury me,

I offer a declaration:

I will speak.

I will matter.

I will break the hush with my own roar.

[imhauntedby]

overestimating how much you mean to someone really fucks you in the head

[imhauntedby]

I’m Haunted By… the Word “Selfish”

“Selfish.”

It reverberates in my mind like a warning bell.

They called me “selfish”—

though I can’t recall a single thing

I’ve done solely for myself.

I poured out all I had—

a well emptied into their thirst.

I was the support. The sidekick.

The friend who always showed up,

the listener who held every secret,

the helper they leaned on

while I leaned on nothing.

When I finally dared to choose—

to say “no,” to set a boundary,

to carve out a moment just for me—

their voices chimed in:

“You’re being selfish.”

Their words felt like glass against my skin,

each syllable a cut I couldn’t soothe.

They couldn’t fathom a life not choreographed

to their narrative,

a heart that didn’t beat to their drum.

So now, when I think of “selfish,”

I see the places I’m still afraid to step into—

my own desires, my own needs,

the uncharted territory of “me, myself, and I.”

I gave too much time to people who were traumatized

because I, too, was traumatized.

I poured all of myself into them

in hopes of saving them—

because I wanted someone to save me.

I gave because nobody gave to me.

And when I stopped,

not out of boundary or self-care,

but because I was utterly spent—

dry of hope, hollow of energy—

that, they said, was selfish.

I’m haunted by that word—

not because it’s sharp,

but because it reveals their blindness:

their inability to see a soul breaking

under the weight of giving too much.

I deserve space.

I deserve voice.

I deserve to shape my days

without fear of judgment.

And perhaps one day,

the echo of “selfish” will soften,

and I’ll reclaim it as a claim to self—

a declaration that I’m worthy

of the care I’ve so freely given.

[imhauntedby]

[imhauntedby]

I’m Haunted By… the Girl Who Made Me Her Sidekick

In high school, I wasn’t a person.

I was a mirror. A spotlight. A laugh track.

She kept me close like an ornament—

always on cue, always entertaining, always there

to make her feel seen.

I mistook her craving for validation

as proof of love.

But her world was small.

Everything had to spin around her.

My stories, my pain, my quiet places—

none of it fit her script.

So when my body began to speak—

through fibromyalgia, through tremors of grief��

she only heard interruption.

A glitch in her day.

I shattered under that weight.

I remember collapsing, raw and unguarded,

and I remember her response:

“I don’t want to be blamed for what she did.”

Her words weren’t cruel so much as vacant—

a breeze passing through a room with no doors.

They revealed how little space she had

for anything that didn’t echo her own feelings.

Then she led my other friend away—

they posted photos of their drinks together,

a silent announcement: this is our world, and you’re not in it.

I felt something hollow open in me when I saw it.

It wasn’t vengeance. It was ignorance.

I wasn’t allowed a moment of collapse,

a moment of pain or any echo of trauma.

Their silence said:

I didn’t see your pain, because I couldn’t see past my own.

You weren’t a child of divorce like me—how could you understand?

You didn’t have PTSD—how dare you overflow your grief?

I grit my teeth as I write this.

I wish I’d known then what was happening to me.

Not to change my past, but to erase that attachment—

to spare myself this ghost of who they were.

I wasn’t angry with them;

I was saddened by how small their view could be—

how little they grasped that friendship

is more than a spotlight and applause.

I am not an entertainer. I am a person.

I felt. I fell. I was human—and I was failed.

Now their images haunt me—

not as villains, but as reminders

of what it means to be unseen by those you trusted.

Their narrowness became its own kind of hurt—

a silent echo I carry

whenever I fear I’ll be reduced again

to someone’s footnote, someone’s sideshow,

someone whose pain is dismissed

because it doesn’t fit another person’s narrative.

[imhauntedby]

I’m Haunted By… Her

She still shows up sometimes.

Barefoot. Quiet. Wide-eyed.

Not angry. Not loud. Just… waiting.

She is the ghost I see—

the flashing image in my mind,

in front of my eyes as I clutch my head in pain.

She is the image I try to suppress

as my brain attempts to regress

to its form before I remembered.

But I remember.

I see her in the corners of my thoughts,

clutching silence like a stuffed animal.

I hear her in my throat

when I try to speak gently to myself,

and it feels foreign.

I’m haunted by her hunger—

for safety, for softness, for someone to notice.

I hear her silent cries,

so loud they’re deafening.

I want her to stop.

I want her to scream louder.

Sometimes I don’t know

if I want to protect her

or become her again.

Maybe I’m writing this

so she knows I haven’t forgotten.

Maybe this is me saying:

I see you. I miss you. I’m trying.

But it’s too late.

She’s on the other side.

She knows there’s no hope.

She is a ghost. A reminder.

A reminder of who I could have been,

of who I should have been,

of what I lost.

I watch the images of her slowly die,

loudly cry.

Alone. Alone.

So alone.

She’s trying to reach out—

through my mind,

through my eyes,

through my memories—

to save her.

And I cannot.

I watch her

as though she were a tragic film

I’ve seen many times before,

like an explosion I knew was coming.

In defeat, I watch it play.

I’m haunted by her.

And I know—

I was her.

I waited for this version of me.

I waited with hope,

with determination.

And now…

she’s haunted by me.

We’re forever looking at each other

across the divide.

One reaching forward,

the other looking back.

Both trapped

in the tragedy that unfolded.

[imhauntedby]

To the ones who feel haunted too

I don't know who you are yet, or if anyone will actually ever read this.

But this-

This is where I start.

I am haunted by memories, softness, mistakes, longing, people I miss, people I was. By gentleness and by rage I never spoke into existence.

This blog is me trying to give a voice to the ghosts, to give them shape, to give them a space to exist.

I must know them.

I can no longer be afraid and I am afraid I no longer have a choice. They are lined up outside a metaphorical door in my mind demanding their way in and I must accept them.

If you are haunted too...

Welcome.

We all have our ghosts.