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 I just finished a deeply affecting novel called Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson. Thompson lists the National's song of the same name as inspiration. I still am processing what I read and even though it largely concerns the relationship and friendship between two young men I related to it far far more than I would have expected. Though it is just over 300 pages, it took me a long time to read because I would stop and start in order to handle the emotions that surged within me as I read.

Some of the passages that just resonated with me more than I could ever tell you:

I know now that there are tiers of humiliation when you are beginning to fall in love with someone. The lowest, the most forgiving, is someone saying the timing is wrong. Above that is being told that you are, have been, always will be, a friend. And then at the top are the words that make me want to turn into a soft, viscous lump that someone could then hose into a sewer grate—You’ve always been like a brother to me.

and:

 I didn’t want to fuck him because it seemed beneath what I felt for him. In the very spare moments where I allowed sex and Jake to exist in the same mental sentence, before I snuffed the thought and replaced it with placid images of dirtied drains or car parts, I felt I’d tarnished something. I wanted Jake as much as I wanted to be Jake as much as I wanted to be his friend as much as I wanted to be his brother.

Lyrics to the National's "Anyone's Ghost" and listen here

Say you stayed home
Alone with the flu
Find out from friends
That wasn't true

Go out at night
With your headphones on again
And walk through
The Manhattan valleys of the dead

Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost
Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost
But I don't want anybody else
I don't want anybody else

You said I came close
As anyone's come
To live underwater
For more than a month

You said it was not inside my heart, it was
You said it should tear a kid apart, it does

Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost
Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost
But I don't want anybody else
I don't want anybody else
I don't want anybody else
I don't want anybody else

I had a hole in the middle
Where the lightning went through it
Told my friends not to worry
I had a hole in the middle
Someone's sideshow wouldn't do it
I told my friends not to worry

Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost
Didn't wanna be your ghost
Didn't wanna be anyone's ghost

Songwriters: Bryce David Dessner / Matthew D Berninger

Anyone’s Ghost lyrics © Val Jester Music, Hawk Ridge Songs

And though this isn't the main use of "ghost" that is in the title this part of the novel struck me like a slap to the face:

The anxiety I felt in the following weeks was consistent, manifesting in ways I would later learn were the symptoms of heartbreak. I punished my well-being by eating less and less. I stole beers from my dad’s fridge and drank alone. I spoke to no one if I could avoid it. And every few minutes, it felt as if someone was stepping on my right cheekbone with a long stiletto.

My mind swapped between three major schools of thought: The first was that Jake had died or was near death. This, while the most long-term horrifying of the three, was also the easiest to deal with on a superficial level. A damaged Jake hadn’t rejected me; he’d been rejected by life. And some of the last days of his life were spent with me, which had a kind of poetic smugness to it, tragic as it all was. It was nonsensical, but I wanted to believe it. The second was more adult and more painful. The details of Jake’s life had changed and he’d had to change with them. Maybe his dad had gotten sick and he’d had to drive overnight to Texas. Or he’d gotten signed by a record label or he’d decided to drive to Las Vegas or the Yukon. The problem with someone with a spirit as rambunctious as Jake’s was that the far-fetched became close, the improbable regular.

The third was the most brutal and made the most sense. Jake had figured me out. He understood the emotions I didn’t—I was in love with him, and only one of us really knew it. I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t true, to duel his examples of my affection with proof that I cared for him as a good friend, nothing more. That I couldn’t be in love with Jake because I didn’t love boys. My mind became a grindstone, and I sharpened my rhetoric against it over the lonely hours. In memory, the moments of tenderness between us became ugly, impulses and feelings that I wished I could erase. I wanted to tell him I’d take it all back if I thought it would do any good.