I remember that date with him. We finished the little dinner at the diner and started walking. We got past the shops, the park, the graveyard, all the way to that old mansion on the end of town with that beautiful gate. The stones were cracking even then, the iron resisting the allure of rust. I always liked the spot, but curiously I had never lingered more than a moment. He stopped there and looked me in the eyes, gripping my arms slightly. He said he was sorry, that he would work to get me this, or anything I wanted, that I was all he needed, that he wanted to marry me. He said everything that could possibly make me forgive, everything that could make me forget. In that moment, it all worked. He kissed me, and I believed everything.

Things between us were fine for awhile. I started revisiting this spot to revisit that feeling. Within six months, I started seeing the figure in front of the gate. I've always liked ghost stories and was so excited to be witness to one. She was so ethereal, so free. She looked like she was dancing, or just ready to. I could not tell if there was truly a melancholy on her face or the remains of some older sadness now released. She was only there at night, and only there if I was alone. She was, in that way, just mine.

Within another six months things were going bad with Henry again, only this time I had lost my financial independence. He controlled more and more of my life. I escaped to that spot outside of the gate and to my ghost friend. I wondered if I had a deeper connection to her than just observer. She seemed to look more and more like me. Perhaps she was the me I would have been without him. I started to hate her for mocking me with another future, but I couldn't stay away. I thought she was the only one that understood.
Of course he always find me here. Of course he was always angry.

He never meant to hurt me, and I never meant to cry. It never stopped, but I couldn't remember it starting. I hid from my family, I didn't know where my friends had done, but I visited her all the time.
I couldn't tell if my ghost was telling me something, or taunting me, or just existing in spite of me. She was so beautiful. The longer I hurt, the less she looked like me. I could swear I wasn't the one changing.

It was five years before I could free myself. I've never had the stomach for my own blood, and I had never taken the right pills before. When it happened it was nearly accidental. Nearly. I did dress up before the effect took hold. I wanted to greet the darkness better than I greeted life.

The moment I started to pass, I knew the truth.

I am my ghost.
I am my mystery, my friend, my guardian, my own torturer, my trap, and my freedom.

I will dance in the echoes of my own sadness, and I will see my lives forever.