The Ghosts – An Inside Look at One of My Hallucinations
I call them the ghosts. They aren’t really spirits, but I can only catch a glimpse of them before they’re gone. Dressed in soft-looking shirts in shades of white and ivory, they carry out everyday tasks. Their presence is neutral – neither threatening nor overly hopeful. Calm and content, they go about their business with only a passing glance thrown my way. I know they are not real, but I feel like I am seeing them for a reason. And I am dying to know what that is.
After seeing the third one, I began to notice the pattern.
She stood indoors near the side door of our apartment building. Draped in a white shirt, the blonde woman seemed relaxed, possibly waiting for someone or something. My eyes lock on her, then shift to my dog. I looked back, and she was gone. Recently, I had been seeing hallucinations of people all around, dressed in all sorts of average colors. But it was with this woman that I recognized that these chance encounters were different.
They didn’t bother me at first.
I simply observed them as they interacted with the world. Sometimes they waited, like the woman by the door. At other times they were more active, like dropping something in a trash can outdoors. Most recently, a woman with brown hair and a cream colored t-shirt was cleaning up toys on the playground of a daycare center I passed.
At first, I waited for the connection between my current struggles and the ghosts to become apparent. But as time wore on, I became more and more impatient. I began looking for them. Each ghost was different, and I never saw one more than once, but I was hyper aware when in the areas I had previously seen them. In classic hallucination fashion, they never arrived on demand.
I wanted something from them.
During the time that I had been seeing the ghosts, I was grappling with an internal conflict surrounding accepting certain circumstances. “This is it,” I thought. “Here is the connection; this is why the ghosts are here. They are my thoughts and emotions personified. They will show me how to accept that I cannot change these things.” Logically, I knew I needed to come to terms with the issue in my life. But emotionally, I was struggling to let go. I desperately wanted to believe that these people dressed in white were here to help me do just that.
But my hallucinations are not there to help me fix my problems.
In my experience, hallucinations aren’t always there for specific reason beyond the unpredictable inner workings of my diseased brain. Schizoaffective disorder does not play by my rules, nor is it there to gift me with anything. Some hallucinations arise from internal conflict, but many torment me with no seeming purpose whatsoever. But I wanted so badly to believe that the ghosts were wandering in my life for a reason.
I wasn’t entirely wrong.
Not surprisingly, the ghosts have not provided me with any help or insight into my problems. Acceptance of the situation I was dealing with came on it’s own. But I’m still seeing them. My psychiatrist and I have thrown ideas back and forth. “Could they be related to the cat?” she asked, referring to the pale-eyed, pale-furred feline I hallucinate occasionally. “I don’t think so,” I said, “the cat brings me comfort and hope and these people are neutral.” Our current thoughts surround my difficulty and anxiety around building close friendships, but I’m not sure that’s it either.
When it comes down to it, what I truly want from these ghosts is their absence.
Even when my hallucinations are positive, be they visual, auditory, or tactile, I would still much rather they go away. Hallucinations have never marked high points in my life. They come into my life in times of high stress, taking my internal distress and recreating it as a part of the external world. Occasionally, this does help my doctor and I figure out what is bothering me at the deepest level, but they are always disruptive.
When I’m experiencing hallucinations, I become anxious that someone will notice me acting strangely and ask uncomfortable questions. It’s hard telling someone you’ve seen or heard something that they didn’t. Most people don’t really know how to handle that kind of information and there’s always the fear of stigma. I also fear that my insight will slip and I will not recognize that they are creations of a brain disease rather than a part of reality. It would be great if the ghosts were beneficial in any way, but, even if they were, I would really prefer that they and my distress make a swift exit out of my life. Reality may not always be as interesting, but nothing is worth having it ripped from my grasp.
You can find more articles about my hallucinations here.
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