The Town That Still Knows My Name

I live in a ghost town. Not the kind with boarded windows and dust in the corners, but one haunted by memory. Every street, every cracked sidewalk, every flickering porch light carries a version of me I didn’t mean to leave behind.
The memories hit hard and without my consent—flashing like headlights in the dark, pulling me under before I even realize I’m back there again.
Some are soft and cinematic: walking down our street in the peak of autumn colors, a late-night drive with music turned up just loud enough to drown out the ache. Others sting like smoke in my lungs—the kind you thought had cleared until you breathe too deeply.

The ghosts here don’t ask for attention. They wait—patient, loyal, and cruelly familiar.

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The Familiar Becomes Foreign

My hometown feels like someone else’s dream now. The streets remember me, but the people don’t. In high school, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone I knew. Now, I don’t recognize a single face. Everybody moved away. Except me.

But the landmarks stay—like stubborn ghosts refusing to leave.
The street where Lucy and I threw glass just to watch it sparkle, until a woman in a minivan screamed at us.
The park where Jamie and I sat in the gazebo, earbuds split, listening to Flyleaf on my iPod until my crush’s shift started.
The McDonald’s Taylor and I would skip Publications class to hang out at.
The park where I walked my dog, shot a music video, got married, and dropped lures during the Pokémon Go era.
Even our little movie theater holds enough memories to fill its own reel of hauntings.

I live among those landmarks—like a ghost who stayed too long after the credits rolled.

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Traverse City—My Friendly Poltergeist

Then there’s Traverse City—the one place that refuses to stay a vacation in my head. I grew up thinking it was a postcard come to life—cherry festivals, sand dunes, and lakes that looked like glass.
Now it feels like walking through a photo that never updates, the kind that traps you in the version of yourself you were when it was taken.

The ghosts there are quieter, but heavier.
The Great Wolf Lodge, where I interviewed for the Entertainment Manager position—an upbeat job at a time when I wasn’t feeling remotely upbeat. I might’ve failed the audition because my voice was gone from belting songs during the three-hour drive, but I passed at pretending I had my shit together. Years later, I stood in that same parking lot, fighting with Dave in front of his mother and our kids over something that didn’t even matter. Different ghosts. Same pain.
Old Town Playhouse, where I volunteered and felt my theatre side wake up again, if only for a little while.
The mural Lori and I posed in front of during a late-night bar crawl, laughing like we didn’t already know everything was about to change.

The Women’s Resource Center, where I wandered for retail therapy when I had more emotions than answers.
The Tropical Smoothie Café I stopped at before work for an emotional support smoothie—Beach Bum with dark chocolate, no turbinado, add whey protein. Back then, I could still afford Vitamin D and B12, too.

The Meijer where I bought my pregnancy tests, and its pharmacy where I filled my Femara prescription.
The roadside park where I bawled my eyes out after finding the conversations between my ex-husband and Sutton.

Traverse City isn’t haunted because of who died there—it’s haunted because of who I was trying so hard to keep alive.

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When Memory Becomes a Mansion

The longer I live, the more I realize my ghosts don’t hide in cemeteries or creaky attics—they live in the places I keep revisiting. Sometimes that’s physical, sometimes it’s emotional. They rattle the doorknobs of old versions of me I’ve tried to lock away.

The memories hit without warning—a song, a scent, a streetlight—and suddenly I’m back inside a moment I never meant to unlock. But I’m learning to open new doors, too. To build rooms filled with softer echoes, lighter laughter, and less regret.

One day, maybe the ghosts won’t be the first to greet me when I drive these roads. Maybe I’ll remember peace instead of pain.

Maybe that’s the real haunting.
Not what refuses to die,
but what insists on being reborn.ed, but building something better in the same place it fell apart.