"It's the Sixth Sense," I typed, watching Bruce Willis on the screen.
Willis' character, a child psychologist, believed he was treating a boy who sees dead people. But he himself was unknowingly dead.
The movie is simple and haunting, a screenplay by Manoj Nelliyattu "M. Night" Shyamalan, who grew up in Pennsylvania - but is, interestingly, also from the other side of the world.
"Yuk, scary movies," she texted back. Her final text that night.
I almost responded with, "Yuk, spicy food," as a retort; that our cinematic and culinary tastes were equally mismatched. But I didn't.
She knows.
On her side of the world, the sun was shining and she was amidst relatives and guests crowded into the kitchen, sharing curries and languages; crowding each other in a din of voices and cultural comfort.
Here, the skies are filled with a bright crescent moon and a million stars. The tiny lights of fireflies flicker among the endless rows of corn. The train occasionally flashes past, blasting a horn that makes the coyotes and raccoons howl out near the river.
It's just me and my scary movie.
Across the room, pencils, watercolors and markers are scattered across the counter, waiting for the next inspiration. My Macbook is there too, waiting for the next entry, like this one.
I keep pausing the video, exchanging texts with my children. I'm alone, but not really. I've been able to feel alive and well on my side of world, even if it's just me.
But I remember feeling so different. Just packing for a business trip could make me feel lonely. I remember, SO many times, being homesick and heartbroken, leaving for the airport as the kids rode their bicycles down the driveway, waving goodbye.
The pain of leaving was as powerful as the bliss in coming home.
They were days of parenting, of pressure, of sleepless nights. Of baby pools and beaches and water wings. School lunches and homework help. They were days of happiness, of being a part of something greater than the me that I was before.
When the tsunami arrived, every day felt like I was just about to leave for the airport.
And so, I learned to do this thing.
A thing that protects me from being broken-hearted. I somehow learned to live inside of my head. A place where I could paint the landscape, instead of living in someone else's scary reality.
And there are times when I feel like Bruce Willis, the psychologist living in a world he believes is real. Where other people are scarred and scared and different.
But one where he is the ghost.
And so, here I am, on the other side of the world, listening to crickets and watching a scary movie.
And I try to imagine a place that is filled with too many people, chattering in different languages, talking over each other, eating and laughing and being way too close.
Even though it seems so foreign, so alien, it's where I was before. And I liked it - I really did.
But that was before I became this ghost.
A happy ghost, here, among the rows of corn and all these summer fireflies.
Here, on the other side of the world.
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