My brother Patrick first brought it up when we were trying to figure out what to call the seemingly constant endeavor all teenagers attempt — starting a band.
Being angry, socially disjointed kids, the idea of an identical and yet polar opposite version of yourself had a certain degree of appeal. So, with the stylistic choice of discarding the e's, I got acquainted with the concept.
There's a longstanding myth that we all have a doppelganger out there somewhere. On a planet that's running out of room for all of us, I suppose the odds are as good now as they've ever been.
The past few weeks of transition from where I was in Ohio to being here in Maine has been equal parts exciting, gratifying, challenging, anxious and terrifying. The one constant I've had to lean on in that time is I'm in another part of the world where I have no history and no history had reason to follow me.
Work hasn't been much different. I've had my share of good days and ones where I was convinced that I was going to be fired or laid off before lunch. Life is nothing if not cyclical, I guess, which means I should've seen this coming before it came up and kicked me in the head.
I had a meeting this afternoon with another department. The usual midweek stuff where everyone tries to touch base, get on the same page, all the usual office vernacular that comes with the territory. By the time I walked into the conference room and sat down, I couldn't ignore the reality that one of the designers, give or take maybe 2-3 years...
...is a dead ringer for Ghost.
Now I have a suspicion that my admitting this will bring about the standard-issue response that I'm either being hyperbolic or obsessive. I wish I was being the former, and contrary to popular belief, I'm nowhere near the latter.
How do I know? Because five minutes before I walked into that conference room, I had no idea this person existed. We don't work on the same floor or in the same department. And five minutes after I sat down and the meeting started, that's when my anxiety kicked into high gear and a singular thought erupted in my head.
Why the hell did she have to so closely resemble someone I'm trying so damn hard to forget?!
The meeting ended up lasting about an hour, and I couldn't have been more relieved to be back at my desk and able to fold myself into getting my work done. Working back-to-back eleven-hour days, I was already feeling more than a little punchy by that point in the day anyway, but even in that beleaguered state, I knew what was coming.
The same intrusive thoughts I've had to fight off for the better part of the last eight years.
If you'd told me this is where her and I would be at this point in time, a continent apart geographically and far, far further away than that emotionally, back when we first met in 2009 I would've told you no way in hell would I do anything to allow that to happen.
And yet...here we are...in that exact situation at this exact moment.
What I'm left with is a one-sided conversation constantly playing in my head like a broken record, recapping all the things that I did to facilitate it, trying to find answers, understanding and I guess on some base level, a form of acceptable closure, in a void of profound and deliberate silence.
It's not my co-worker's fault. How could she have possibly known that her presence in that meeting would trigger that level of emotional and psychological reaction in me? She's not Ghost, nor will she ever be and I can find a degree of solace in that.
The hard part is going to be the reality that whenever I'm walking through the office and we cross paths, part of me is going to spark into life and remind me of how much she looks like Ghost, which is going to remind me of Ghost, and then I'll have to deal with all the things I don't want to think or feel anymore about Ghost.
Such is what happens in a world full of doppelgangers, I guess.
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