Yes, you've been haunted, and I was the one clanking the chains. And if you think about it, you'll remember it all.

That first year, when you were teetering between despair and acceptance, I was the one who picked you up and carried you when you were ready to chuck it all in. Did you ever hear, maybe just at the far end of being able to hear anything, a voice telling you don't or please hang on or I love you? That was me.

{How is that possible? Well, this is going to sound awfully hokey, but ghosts have powers. I have the power to change people's feelings just by talking to them - most ghosts sing, but I never could, if you'll recall. And once I realized I could I do that, I did it whenever you needed it.}

Another example: you remember the night with the pills, in front of the bathroom mirror, one year to the day? I was there with you, telling you no, over and over again until you said "No," too, and flushed them down the toilet. And I was the one who whispered be strong, I love you through the night just to make sure you didn't try that again.

I was also the one who kept you going through that interview from hell, in case you wondered. You don't want to know what I said when I heard they were going to make you reapply for your own job. Don't get me wrong - the words that came out of your mouth were all you {hijacking people, like I'm doing now, wasn't in my repertoire then}. I just kept your spirits up and stopped you from feeling afraid, and kept you from hauling off at the smug SOB...

{And I should confess that what happened to him afterwards was sort of my fault. I didn't exactly do it, myself, but... well, I'll explain later.}

Every year thereafter, when you were alone in our apartment, and then in your own, I was the one who was talking to you, there in the silence. I know you couldn't hear me, but I talked, anyway. Hell, I talked for hours on end, just needing to have you there to bounce my feelings off of, and remind me why I was staying "alive" over here.

Now, that seems really masturbatory of me, doesn't it? Just me and my ego having a one-sided conversation from hell, night after night, to keep up the illusion that you could hear me, and not daring to make myself really, truly heard for fear of scaring you, or driving you insane. Please forgive me that - I needed to be near you, like that, to keep myself going

{Not to mention keeping Mr. Bright Side under control, even though I was doing what he wanted in a sick sort of way. More later, I promise}

And... more confession time, here... I was the one who scared off your would-be boyfriends, one at a time.

Just as I could make you feel like you could go on, and that everything was alright, I could make others feel as though things were bad, and they needed to get lost. And that's why so many of them just up and left in the middle of dinner, or one of your bad movies. That's why that one guy {Bob, I think} got angry and told you he never wanted to see you again when you made that bad joke about his tie. That's why poor Fred just got up and all but ran out the door when you two were making out...

That was wrong of me - hideously, horribly wrong. I wish I could blame that on Mr. Bright Side, but that was all me, with just a little goading from him. Please accept my apologies for messing up your love life all those years. A few of those guys really were creepy bastards trying to take sexual advantage of a bereaved woman, but most of them were on the level.

{And Tim was pretty cool, too. I'm really sorry I put the whammy on him.}

And I was the one sleeping with you - inside you. Not like we did when I was alive, and we were over the flashbacks, but truly inside of you. It was like you were a warm sleeping bag I'd crawl into every night, and I'd wrap myself up in you and dream those hours away.

I wanted so bad to join you in those dreams {another ghost power, or so I'm told} but I never learned how to do that. Mr. Bright Side told me he'd teach me how, but I don't trust him, so I sort of missed out on that...

{And it's probably for the best, considering the sort of things he got up to when I didn't keep him on a tight leash. It's also for the best, all in all, because it makes writing this letter - and doing what I'm doing, here - little more easier than it would have otherwise been.}

Hopefully that'll put some more memories in place. The living have some kind of forgetfulness that kicks in when they run into us - sort of like an immune response when a germ hits the bloodstream? Well, that's this: an immune response to us poor ghosts and the stupid, messed-up things we do when we're in love.

You see, when you're dead, like I am, it's the big, deep feelings that keep us going. People like you, and other things and people I was attached to beyond all reason, keep us tied down to the world, but it's those feelings that really animate us. They're the heartbeat and the blood, over here - and my heart was mostly beating for you and you alone.

Do you remember the time you said you lived for my love? That's what it's like to be tied to someone in the way I was tied to you. Every day I thought of you - deeply, intensely and passionately, to the exclusion of almost everything else. My day wasn't right unless I was near you for almost all of it, and every time I had to go away I counted the seconds until I was back in your apartment, having that one-sided conversation while you watched your bad movies, or tried to make dinner, or wondered why no one ever called...

That's changed, now - it has to change. And that's why I'm saying goodbye.