The Black Ghost

I had a dream last night that I saw a black ghost from the road. Though the friends I was traveling with told me the ghost was frequently seen, ghosts have never appeared to me and I never thought they would. I saw it clearly and that was shocking to say the least. It caused me to falter in my step, to stand agog in wonder and fear, it caused me to hallucinate. It caused my heart to race and my shoulders to tense.

It’s my theory that dreams replicate the dominant emotion one is feeling in everyday life, but attach that feeling to an abstract conception. The ghost in my dream is the embodiment of my current fears, and I reacted to it as I react every day to the stresses in my life. The difficulty breathing; the avoidance of truth; the shock.

The thoughts that dominate my life revolve around moving back to Toronto, paying for school, my new apartment, new roommates, new atmosphere, new classes and starting a new life, once again. About what to do after this year, when I’ve graduated. The future is a huge unknown and - like the ghost - it excites me to no end and frightens me to death at the same time.

The black ghost represents the many things I feel that I am facing I didn’t expect to be there but deep down knew would appear. Like love, and falling into it. More than anything else, for me the ghost is love. Like the ghost, love appears unexpectedly. It’s something I’ve never quite believed in, though part of me always thought it would be true. It’s something I don’t want to deal with. It’s something I want to avoid. But I can’t ignore it, and its presence is haunting me. I’m also afraid that it is just as much of a phantom in its nature as the ghost – unreliable, appearing and disappearing in front of my eyes, completely beyond my control. I am afraid of the ghost, and I am equally afraid of love. They both entice me but also seem to prophecy my doom.

I am afraid of the black ghost of my dreams and its image is haunting me.