The Ghostiest of Ghosts (and the Witch Who Knows Why)

October suits me.

It gives language to the way I live between: veil-thin, liminal, a little spectral at the edges. People fear ghosts—specters. I’m the other kind: sheet over the head, trick-or-treater warm, Casper-gentle. That’s closer to me. Folks come for the hearth of me—my listening, my steady seeing—and when I fade, I’m not a terror. I’m simply absent. Not because I don’t care; for most of my life, disappearing kept me whole.

I learned to fawn first.

To smooth the air, read the room, shape-shift so no one snagged on my edges. In high stress, yes becomes reflex, conflict avoidance a sacrament. When need turns from connection to extraction, I soften, blur, and let the mist absorb me. People call it ghosting. I call it muscle memory—self-preservation.

Some say that makes me a coward. Maybe I was, once. But I’m fifty now—witch-boned and weathered—and hard truths don’t scare me. What I don’t have is surplus: not time, not bandwidth, not my body’s reserves. I choose where my flame goes. I won’t battle for sport or debate my need for peace.

This season is full—queer, adoptive, neurodivergent family full. Two kids with big feelings. Paperwork and pickups. Work that asks for my magic, and days that need my hands and bleed my energy. I triage my messages like a medic. I answer what’s needed first. And sometimes people feel me fall away.

They tell me they miss me. I believe them. It surprises me every time.

Adoptee math taught me early I could be loved and still left, wanted and still wandering. I’m forever unlearning the idea that I’m easy to lose. Some days I’m good at it; other days I move through fog and call it home. The liminal—between races, between labels, the queer who won’t be neatly categorized, the outsider with the watchful heart—has always been safe for me. I can see everything from here. This is where I feel most me. Ghost me.

But safety and connection are not enemies. I’m learning that, too.

What looks like ghosting from the outside is often discernment: I stay where energy is reciprocal, where conversation is alive, where love circles back with soft hands. I prioritize my children first, then the family and friendships that don’t require me to mask, suppress, or prove I’m here. I’ve stopped apologizing for choosing the lightest rooms.

And still, I hold the ache:

People hurt when I fade. They miss the way I show up—present, generous, bright. I miss it too. I carry the grief without making it a moral failing. Distance can be a boundary. Silence can be medicine. Yes, it can also be avoidance. I know when it is. I’m working on the difference.

The witch in me helps.

She braids the practical and the sacred and whispers, “Energy is not infinite. Protect your flame.” She teaches me to ward my thresholds, to name what drains me, to claim what feeds me. She blesses my no as an altar, my leaving as a spell to return to myself. She doesn’t shame the ghost; she gives her a lantern and a map.

If I owe anything, it’s clarity—
not access, not constant availability, not a forever-yes. Just the honesty to say, “I’m at capacity,” “I can’t hold this with you right now,” or “I need space and don’t know when I’ll have more.” That isn’t a fight—it’s a fact. Not cowardice—care, for me and for those I love. Burnt-out me is no good to anyone; boundary-held me can love for the long haul.

I used to think becoming “solid” meant never disappearing again.

Now solidity looks like transparency: you can still see the sky through me, but I’m here—outlined, named. I’m learning to be both—witch and ghost—intact and in flux, present and selective. To stay when staying is mutual and kind, and to leave before resentment knots the cord.

So this October, if you notice me misting at the edges, trust I’m not punishing you. I’m practicing being a sovereign body in a loud world, tending a family that asks more than most days can give, reparenting a younger self who thought presence was a prize. I’m letting her rest.

I will always live a little in the in-between. It’s where my sight is strongest.

But I am braver now. If I go quiet, it’s on purpose. If I return, it’s on purpose. If I say no, it’s devotion. If I say yes, it’s real.

I am the ghostiest of ghosts, the witchiest of witches—
and I’m finally haunting my own life on purpose.