Ghost

Today, my mother, sister and I took my niece, her little friend, and my nephews to the Denver natural history museum. It was jam packed inside the museum, and I become really drained and exhausted when I’m in large crowds. My therapist tells me that this is a common occurrence in people who have eating disorders. We tend to feel emotions very intensely and because we are really sensitive, we easily pick up and sense the emotions of others. So, we not only experience our own emotions but we absorb whatever feelings are floating around in our environment as well. This is why large crowds can make us feel so overwhelmed and drained, and it is one reason why we go to such extreme lengths to numb our emotions altogether.

Towards the end of the afternoon in the museum, I was wiped out and I started to feel kind of disconnected, almost like I was not quite real. More like a ghost.

My mother asked me, “Are you okay, Nicole?”

I must have been staring at an exhibit for too long. I do that sometimes, I stare intently at something and I get this distant, lost look in my eyes.

“Are you okay?”

I like my mother a lot. It’s important to love your mother, but I think it is more important to like your mother.

I said, “Yes, I’m okay.”

I really like my mother.

Just before we left the museum, we were all waiting in a long line of people, standing directly beneath two huge dinosaur skeletons dangling from wires fastened to the high ceilings. A little baby in a stroller ahead of us was almost asleep and was looking at me with very tired eyes. So, I closed my eyes and left them closed for a couple of seconds before opening them again. Then the baby closed her eyes for a couple of seconds before opening them and staring back at me again. I closed my eyes once more and left them closed for a bit longer. When I opened them, the baby imitated me again and shut her eyes just like I had shut mine. This time though, she didn’t open them, she fell asleep. It’s a little trick I used all the time with my youngest nephew to help him fall asleep when he was a baby. Babies are tiny parrots, they’ll mimic everything you do.

Rain fell steadily as we left the museum and slowly drove back home through heavy rush hour traffic. The sky had lost all of its color and had faded to a dull, gloomy gray. I had Alias’ “Weathering” in my ears as I sipped a cup of cheap coffee from a gas station and looked at the downtown streets through our rain streaked windows.

I heard my mother laugh at something my sister said to her. She has a great, contagious laugh. I can hear it over anything.

I was staring out the window, watching water droplets trickle across the glass, and I thought that I should be feeling something more than this. Something more than this drifting feeling of disconnectedness. But not today, I guess. Today, I’m just a ghost helping babies fall asleep in a hall of ancient dinosaur bones. Just a blurry shape in the fog passing over soaked city streets, the dark pavement reflecting countless little glowing circles of light from headlight beams as the rain freezes into snow.