Ghosts in the Stairwell

There was something almost disorienting about meeting her. Not because she was extraordinary in the loud ways people usually mean when they say someone left an impression, but because she seemed untouched in all the ways I no longer know how to be. Untouched by devastation. Untouched by the kind of grief that rearranges your entire nervous system until even small joys feel suspicious. She was kind in that effortless, unguarded way people are when the world has not spent years teaching them to brace for impact. The kind of person who still stands with her shoulders relaxed, who still laughs with her whole chest instead of only the careful, measured pieces of herself she feels are safe to offer. We stood there talking for nearly twenty minutes about absolutely nothing important at all, and somehow that nothingness felt freeing in a way I cannot properly explain. No tragedy. No trauma. No “how are you holding up?” hanging between us like humidity. Just two women talking about apartments and kids and the weather while the afternoon sun spilled gold across the concrete. And maybe that sounds insignificant, but when your life has become a graveyard of heavy conversations, ordinary things start to feel holy.

She told me I had beautiful green eyes, and I immediately made some awkward joke back because I still don’t know how to let kindness land inside of me without trying to dodge it first. Compliments feel dangerous now, almost invasive, like someone reaching toward a wound I spend most of my life trying to keep covered. It feels eventually they’ll look closer and realize the eyes they’re complimenting are not bright or enchanting at all, just exhausted. Bloodshot from crying. Hollowed out by years of staring at bathroom walls, funeral homes, cemetery dirt, and phone screens carrying life-changing news. People always talk about eyes like they are windows to the soul, and maybe that’s why compliments about mine make me uncomfortable, because if someone looks too long, I’m terrified they’ll see it all. The grief sits behind them like a storm cloud that never fully moves on. The exhaustion. The loneliness. The permanent ache of being someone who has survived too many impossible things too young.

But I noticed her eyes, too. Not the color. Not even really the shape. Just the feeling of them. They were soft in a way mine haven’t been in years. There was no hyper-vigilance living in them. No quiet panic humming beneath the surface. They still carried light, real light, not the performative kind people force into themselves to make others comfortable. Her eyes looked like they had been met with love more often than grief. Like when she cries, someone reaches for her instead of away from her. Like life has hurt her before, sure, because life hurts everyone eventually, but not in the catastrophic, identity-altering ways that split a person clean down the middle and leave them trying to spend the rest of their life pretending they were never broken apart in the first place. Looking at her felt like looking at someone who had grown in sunlight her entire life, while I have spent years trying to bloom in the dark.

And I know it sounds unfair, maybe even cruel, to look at someone and instantly know they haven’t suffered in the same ways you have, but sometimes pain recognizes the absence of itself immediately. Grief can spot untouched softness from across a room the same way wolves can smell blood from miles away. There was something about her that felt unfractured. Not perfect, not naïve, just… intact. Like life had allowed her to remain whole. She had the aura of someone whose story had mostly unfolded the way stories are supposed to. The kind where parents stay long enough to become grandparents. The kind where home is still a place you return to instead of something you spend your entire adulthood mourning. She spoke about her parents with a warmth so casual it almost startled me. Not performative gratitude, not the overly intentional kind people use after loss teaches them how temporary everything is. No, hers was instinctive. Effortless. She talked about calling her mom the way people talk about stopping by the grocery store. Certain. Assumed. Safe. Like it had never once crossed her mind that a phone call could become impossible forever.

And when she mentioned Mother’s Day plans, I swear my body reacted before my mind did. It was subtle, but immediate, like something inside me physically tightened. My stomach knotted. My chest pulled inward. Because she said it so lightly. So excitedly. She smiled while talking about brunch reservations and flowers and how her kids were making handmade gifts, and there was not even the slightest tremble in her voice. No pause beforehand to mentally prepare herself for the landmine of the topic. No flicker of grief behind her eyes. No careful emotional calculations about whether she would spend the rest of the day spiraling afterward. Just excitement. Simple, uncomplicated excitement. And God, I had forgotten people could experience Mother’s Day like that. I had forgotten that some people can hear the word “mother” and still think of comfort instead of ambulances… Instead of standing in your aunt’s yard, feeling the entire architecture of your life collapse inward like a building during demolition.

I kept staring at her while she talked, thinking about how differently tragedy shapes a person. Some people move through life assuming love will stay, and then there are people like me who silently measure the fragility of everything in the room the second we enter it. She probably has never rehearsed conversations in the car beforehand, preparing herself for the possibility of innocent questions turning catastrophic. She probably has never had to calculate whether she has enough emotional energy to survive being asked, “Do you have siblings?” without watching the atmosphere immediately change around her. People never know what to do after you answer honestly. There’s always that horrible shift when their smile falters and their posture changes. Pity rushes into the room like cold air through an open door. Suddenly, they are apologizing. Suddenly, you are comforting them for your grief. So you learn to hesitate before answering. You learn to simplify your losses into digestible pieces. You learn how to answer without your voice cracking in half. You learn how to carry entire cemeteries quietly inside your mouth. And standing there with her, listening to her speak so freely about love and family and future plans, I realized some people still live life like the ground beneath them is stable. Like they trust it not to disappear. Meanwhile, I have spent years feeling like every happy moment comes with a hidden expiration date attached to it somewhere I just haven’t found yet.

She was beautiful, but not in the intimidating way magazines try to sell beauty to women like me. Not sharp-edged or curated or polished within an inch of perfection. She wasn’t the kind of beautiful that makes you compare your body in dressing room mirrors or wonder if your face would look softer if you lost ten pounds and slept more. She was beautiful in the way stability is beautiful. In the way safety is beautiful. In the way a porch light left on for you feels beautiful when you’ve spent your whole life learning how to come home to darkness. There was something deeply feminine about her, but not fragile. Rooted. Like she had spent years being watered properly. Loved properly. Seen properly. The kind of woman who still moved through the world believing she belonged in it. Her brown curls bounced when she laughed, her wedding ring catching the sunlight every time she lifted her hand to brush hair from her face, and even the way she leaned casually against the stair rail made me ache because she looked so comfortable inside her own life.

She had this confidence that looked inherited. Not spoiled, she wasn’t arrogant. Just secure in a way I have never once experienced. The kind of security that settles into your posture, your voice, the way you move through rooms. She stood there comfortably existing inside herself, and I realized how foreign that feeling is to me. Because I move through life like someone constantly apologizing for taking up space. Constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Constantly preparing myself emotionally for abandonment, disappointment, grief, loss. People raised in love seem to carry this quiet assumption that they are worthy of good things. Meanwhile, people like me carry contingency plans. Exit strategies. Emotional backpacks stuffed with worst-case scenarios. I think trauma teaches you to become your own emergency contact long before you were ever supposed to have to.

Then her husband came running past us, chasing their children down the sidewalk, and the entire scene unfolded in front of me so quickly it almost felt cinematic. One of the kids was squealing, barefoot and wild with laughter, while he jogged after them with this exaggerated, dramatic desperation that made all of them laugh harder. When he passed her, he stopped just long enough to kiss her on the cheek before continuing after the kids like it was instinctual. Like loving her publicly was as natural to him as breathing. And she giggled afterward. Not performatively. Not the strained kind women force out when they’re trying to convince themselves their marriage is still romantic. Not the kind loaded with tension or insecurity or the quiet desperation of someone begging to still be chosen. It was light. Easy. The kind of laugh that comes from a nervous system that has spent years believing it is safe to exist inside love. Safe to be adored. Safe to soften.

She smiled afterward and casually mentioned they’d been together since high school. Sixteen years of someone waking up and continuing to choose you. Sixteen years of consistency. Sixteen years of inside jokes and grocery store runs and sleepy “good mornings”, forehead kisses, and fights that probably ended with repair instead of destruction. Sixteen years of never having to wonder if the person you love is suddenly going to disappear emotionally overnight and leave you clawing at the walls trying to understand what changed. She said they had never spent a single night apart, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how foreign that sounded to me. The idea of being loved steadily for sixteen years feels almost fictional when your entire life has taught you that love is something fragile, temporary, and always one bad day away from collapsing in on itself.

And God, there was something about that realization that cracked open something ugly and aching inside of me. Not jealousy exactly, because I don’t want her life in the shallow way people assume. I don’t envy her or the husband or even the ease of her happiness. It was deeper than that. Older than that. It felt more like grief for the version of me that never got a fair shot at becoming someone like her. Grief for the little girl in me who probably would have been softer if life had not turned survival into her primary personality trait. Because I think trauma changes the architecture of a person permanently. Some people are raised inside warmth, and it teaches their bodies that love is a safe place to rest. Others are raised inside unpredictability and loss, and it teaches them to stay emotionally packed and ready to evacuate at all times. Standing there listening to her talk, I realized she moves through the world like someone who has always believed she would be kept. And I move through it like someone who is already bracing for the next thing to leave.

Because while she stood there glowing with the ease of someone deeply rooted, I felt myself shrinking into every broken thing I’ve ever carried. It was almost physical, the sensation of folding inward around my own damage while she stood there so open and untouched by the kinds of losses that hollow a person out from the inside. She doesn’t know my mother died on Mother’s Day. She doesn’t know I found her dead in her car. She doesn’t know that every year, when spring starts blooming and everyone else is buying flowers and brunch reservations, my body starts keeping score of the days like a countdown to impact. She doesn’t know my brother died by suicide, or that sometimes I still catch myself reaching for my phone to tell him something before grief slams back into me all over again like a car crash happening in slow motion. She doesn’t know about my niece. She doesn’t know about my estranged siblings. My grandpa, who raised me. My father sitting in prison while I try to make sense of all the ways a family can fracture beyond repair. She doesn’t know how many funerals my body has survived, how many times I’ve stood in black clothing staring at a casket, trying to comprehend how human beings are somehow expected to continue grocery shopping and paying bills after watching entire pieces of their world lowered into the ground.

To her, I am just a woman with green eyes standing in the stairwell making conversation while the afternoon sun hits the concrete just right. Just another neighbor. Just another mom. Just another passing interaction in an ordinary day. And maybe that’s why talking to her felt so strangely contradictory in its comfort. For twenty minutes, I existed outside of my grief. Outside of the identity loss has built around me like barbed wire. I got to be someone whose story had not already been summarized by tragedy before introductions were even finished. Nobody tilted their head at me with that awful mixture of pity and caution people wear when they know too much about your pain. Nobody softened their voice like I was standing on the edge of collapse. Nobody gave me that look, the one I have come to hate most, where people stare at you like they can almost see the ghosts standing behind your shoulders.

I didn’t realize how badly I missed that. I didn’t realize how exhausting it has become to be known primarily through the lens of what I’ve survived. Because once people know your story, it changes the temperature of every interaction afterward. You stop being fully human to them and start becoming symbolic. Tragic. Inspirational if they’re trying to make it sound kinder than it is. People begin speaking to you carefully, handling you like cracked glass, and maybe they mean well, but eventually it starts to feel like grief enters the room before you do. Like your ghosts introduce themselves first and your actual personality arrives second. But with her, none of that existed. There were no condolences lingering invisibly between us. No history. No ache. Just conversation. Just sunlight. Just two women talking while children laughed somewhere in the background and the world, for a brief moment, felt unbearably normal.

And maybe that’s what devastated me most about meeting her. Not her happiness. Not even her softness. But the realization that there are still versions of me buried somewhere underneath all this grief. Versions untouched by death for at least a few minutes at a time. Versions of me that can still laugh at dumb jokes in stairwells and forget, however briefly, that my life has become a long series of survivals stacked on top of one another like gravestones.

But maybe the saddest part is that within six minutes of meeting her, I already knew I would avoid her forever. I knew it in the same instinctive way animals know when something is too bright, too open, too gentle for their wounded bodies to trust. Even while I was smiling at her, nodding along to the conversation, there was another part of me quietly planning escape routes. And that realization made me hate myself a little, because she did absolutely nothing wrong. She was lovely. Warm. Easy to talk to. The kind of woman I think I probably could have loved as a friend in another lifetime. But people like her make me painfully aware of all the invisible bruises I carry beneath my skin. The kind no one sees until they accidentally press against them.

Standing next to her felt like standing in front of a mirror reflecting the person I could have been if life had not hollowed me out so early. Not prettier. Not smarter. Just… lighter. Softer around the edges. Less afraid. There was something almost haunting about it, realizing that somewhere along the way I stopped becoming a person and started becoming a survival story. And I don’t know how to explain how exhausting it is to constantly feel like the ghost of the person you were supposed to become. Like somewhere there exists a version of me untouched by all this grief. A version who still believes love stays. A version who doesn’t flinch when her phone vibrates late at night. A version who laughs without guilt afterward. A version whose body is not constantly preparing for disaster like a house with smoke alarms that never stop chirping. Sometimes I feel her around me like phantom limb pain, the woman I might have been if life had not kept taking and taking and taking before I even had the chance to fully grow into myself.

So now I know what I’ll do. I’ll peek around corners before going to my car like someone avoiding an ex-lover instead of a kind woman who did nothing but compliment my eyes. I’ll wait an extra minute in the stairwell if I hear her laughter across the parking lot, timing trips differently just to avoid another interaction that might force me to stand too close to the life I will never have. I’ll become hyperaware of the sound of her voice drifting through the parking lot, and if I hear it, I’ll suddenly remember something I forgot inside. Some people avoid others because they dislike them. I avoid people when I can feel myself wanting their softness too badly. Because proximity eventually creates familiarity, and familiarity always leads to questions. Innocent questions at first. Questions people ask without realizing they’re slowly pulling at threads that keep your entire life stitched together. “How are your parents?” “Do you have siblings?” “What does your dad do?” “What are your plans for Mother’s Day?” Questions that most people answer absentmindedly, but for me feel like stepping barefoot onto shattered glass.

Because eventually people always find out. Maybe not all at once, but slowly. Piece by piece. The story leaks out of you no matter how tightly you try to hold it in. A passing comment. An awkward silence. A date you suddenly grow quiet around. And once people know your story, they stop looking at you normally. You can see it happen in real time sometimes, the exact moment someone’s perception of you shifts. Their eyes soften. Their smile falters slightly. Their voice changes register. Suddenly they are no longer speaking to you like a woman standing in front of them, but like a collection of tragedies wearing a human face. You stop being Necole. You become the girl with the dead mother. The dead brother. The estranged siblings. The incarcerated father. The friend with the tragic life. The woman people describe with a sigh before they even say your name. And maybe they mean well. Maybe it comes from compassion. But there is something so deeply isolating about watching people slowly stop seeing you as a whole person and start seeing you as someone marked by suffering first and everything else second.

Still, for today, the woman was really nice. And I keep coming back to that fact because it feels important somehow. In a world that has often felt sharp and devastating and unbearably heavy, she was simply kind to me without needing anything in return. No hidden agenda. No performance. Just warmth. She had kind eyes. The kind that have never had to learn how to look away from death because they’ve never had death stare back at them long enough to change them permanently. The kind of eyes that still meet the world openly instead of cautiously. Eyes that have not spent years scanning rooms for bad news or memorizing the sound of people crying in funeral homes. There was no survival instinct sitting behind them. No permanent sadness settled into the corners. They still believed life was mostly good. They still trusted happiness enough to hold it with both hands instead of waiting for it to disappear.

And maybe somewhere deep down, I envy that more than anything else. Not her marriage. Not even the beautiful family trailing laughter behind them like sunlight. It’s the lightness of her spirit that haunts me. The way she moved through the world without seeming emotionally armored. The way she laughed without hesitation, spoke without overthinking, smiled without it looking painful around the edges. She carried herself like someone who had never had to rehearse grief in her head before bed every night. Like someone who still believed tomorrow was something to look forward to instead of something to survive. And God, I miss that version of humanity. The version untouched by catastrophic loss. The version of a person who still believes the world is fundamentally safe and love is fundamentally permanent.

Because grief changes the atmosphere around a person. I don’t know how else to explain it. It becomes this invisible thing trailing behind you everywhere you go, like smoke clinging stubbornly to clothes long after the fire has burned out. You carry it into grocery stores and birthday parties and first dates and casual conversations in apartment stairwells. It follows you into every room, every interaction, every moment that should feel light. Even when you are laughing, it’s there. Even when you are smiling, it’s there. A second shadow stitched to your feet. And after enough years, you stop remembering what it felt like to move through life without dragging that weight behind you constantly. Watching her felt almost surreal because she moved so freely. Like her spirit had never been forced to carry more than it could hold.

I think that’s what stayed with me after the conversation ended. Not her beauty. Not even her kindness. Just the startling realization that there are still people walking around whose souls have not been made heavy by loss yet. People who still laugh from their stomachs instead of their throats. People who still expect good things to happen to them. People who still believe love stays. And maybe that realization hurt because somewhere underneath all my grief, I remembered that I used to be softer too. I used to move through the world without constantly anticipating devastation. I used to believe life would eventually become gentle with me. And for a few painful minutes standing there with her, I got a glimpse of the woman I might have been if it had.

She invited me to the pool, and I already know I won’t go. I’ll smile if I see her again. I’ll probably even tell her, “We should definitely do that sometime,” in the same polite, practiced way people say things they already know will never happen. But later, when the afternoon comes and the sound of children laughing echoes outside my window and sunlight spills across the pavement in that warm golden way that makes ordinary life look cinematic, I’ll stay inside. I’ll convince myself I’m tired. That I have too much to do. That I forgot laundry in the dryer or emails to answer or dishes in the sink. But the truth is much uglier than that. The truth is I don’t know how to stand beside people who still belong to light without becoming painfully aware of how much darkness I carry. I don’t know how to sit poolside making small talk while part of me feels like it’s dragging a graveyard around by the ankles.

And it’s not because I hate myself the way people probably assume. It’s not some dramatic self-loathing spiral where I think I’m worthless or unlovable beyond repair. It’s quieter than that. Sadder, maybe. More ingrained. I think somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I belonged in soft places. Stopped believing I was built for ease or joy or uncomplicated happiness. There are people who step naturally into warmth because warmth is what raised them. And then there are people like me, people who became so familiar with storms that calmness itself starts to feel suspicious. Foreign. Like wearing someone else’s clothes and realizing nothing fits quite right. I have spent so many years emotionally bracing for impact that I no longer know how to fully unclench, even in safe moments. Especially in safe moments. Because grief has taught me that the second you start relaxing into happiness, life has a way of reaching over and switching the lights off without warning.

Sometimes I think trauma changes your relationship with sunlight entirely. Other people stand in it naturally, faces tilted upward, soaking in warmth without questioning whether they deserve it. Meanwhile, people like me hover at the edges of it, half-hidden under awnings, waiting for clouds we swear we can already see forming in the distance. I think after enough loss, your body starts associating joy with vulnerability. Because every beautiful thing I have ever loved eventually became something I had to grieve. My mother. My brother. Versions of myself. Relationships. Safety. Stability. Even hope feels dangerous now sometimes. Like if I hold it too tightly, life will notice and punish me for it. So I stay emotionally prepared. Always. Like a house built in tornado country, stocked with flashlights and emergency kits even on sunny days.

Maybe that belief is wrong. Maybe it is just the grief talking. Maybe it’s years of loss slowly convincing me I am fundamentally harder to love than other people. Harder to keep. Harder to hold gently. Because grief changes you. It makes you quieter in some ways and unbearable in others. It makes you too deep for casual conversations and too exhausted for shallow ones. It makes your heart heavy at inconvenient times. It makes ordinary holidays feel like crime scenes. And I think part of me worries that if someone kind and lighthearted like her got too close to me, she would eventually feel the heaviness radiating off of me and instinctively pull away. Not because she’s cruel, but because sadness this deep changes the atmosphere around a person. People can feel it, even when you try desperately to hide it.

Or maybe some of us really are just born to endure. Maybe there are people who are given softer stories and people who are given survival instead. I don’t know anymore. I just know that standing there with her felt a little like standing outside a house glowing warmly from the inside during a storm, knowing you are welcome to come in, but no longer believing you belong there.