You know what I see when I look at certain men?
Ghosts.
Disappearing in plain sight
Expensive ghosts in beautiful suits, driving cars that cost more than most people’s houses, checking watches that could fund a startup. They’ve been productive and organised everything except for one thing that matters. They have disappeared.
Not in the cinematic sense. They’re still on the calls, still closing the deals, perhaps still going to the same restaurants where the waiters know their names. But the conversations are about nothing: the new kitchen extension, the ski trip, the consultant who’s sorted the supply chain, or did you hear about such and such who is off to another Swiss retreat in the mountains.
The food tastes like cardboard and the wine could be vinegar for all they care. They train not to feel alive, but to keep the pounds away and because it's the done thing. They buy things they don’t even like because those are the things that men like them are supposed to have.
The life I carried
I can recognise them because I was one.
A life upholstered in silk and the shadow of the untold story. On paper it looked enviable: black tie seasons, high-gloss deals, a passport with a ton of stamps.
But that was the stale romance of some ridiculous illusion I carried, and a quiet death by a thousand small acceptances. I was performing intimacy with the system that never really knew me, and never cared for me. Come on, that is a fact.
When the ghost becomes visible
The thing about being a ghost is you don’t feel the moment you start fading out. Instead, you just wake up one day and realise that you’ve been walking through someone else’s dream with your eyes open, unfocused but dosed-up and mesmerised by a system.
You see it in the mirror, when it becomes tougher to conceal.
Then there are the other tells like the frequent Rolex glances, the smile that doesn’t match the eyes, the weight of hours you can’t name. The marriage could be gone, the daughter or son likely growing up on carefully scheduled weekends, and your life might be a constant loop of work and distractions.
Solid ground again
In these moments, you don’t need more intellectual explanations or methods that keep you boxed in, you need to feel the strength of being on solid ground again.
You can stay a ghost and carry on pretending, if you're not ready that is, or you can begin to return your own impulse engines.
The strengths and energy that you built this life with can be realigned towards something that you authentically own.
