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Ghosting, the modern warfare of communication in this new age of society, the act of full withdrawal from communication and the echoes of “could haves, would haves, and should haves” left in the wake of it. I recently went through a tough situation where I was ghosted by a person whom I considered a close friend. Their sudden silence filled me with a flood of confusing and frustrating emotions that left me feeling emotionally stagnant. Shortly after, I sat down with my therapist in the hopes of gaining some clarity and help make sense of this situation. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t understand the immense loneliness I was feeling. For the life of me, I couldn’t truly feel any type of closure or peace. In an attempt to come to terms with it, I kept asking myself if I really was being ignored, or if perhaps their actions were for the best. Maybe this short-lived hurt would spare me long-term pain?
I asked my therapist whether I should feel guilty if I were the person doing the ghosting or should it be something I do to assimilate to this new form of communication? “I’m not saying you should ghost everyone just because you please or just don’t want to deal with the responsibility of your emotions, but because you consider that it will be for the best in the long term,” replied my therapist, which brought me to think of the infamous question,“Is it better to speak or to die?” Why do they have the need to ghost? Where does that need come from if they might not even react how I imagine them to? And what is the right way to handle being ghosted? But perhaps the most important question is, Why do I want a reaction or feel the need to reach out to them in the first place, if their disinterest and silence is louder? Sure, I felt an incessant need to reach out and get the words that were stuck in my throat off of my chest, but at what cost? Losing ourselves in between silences and whispers? Where does my pride end and their ego begin?
“You just didn’t owe them a response after such an awkward interaction in which you couldn’t do more than what you’re doing now, even if it was hypothetical. From personal experiences, as the diploma on my wall says and the professional I happen to be, I can tell you that I’ve been through this and I just didn’t know how to deal with it at the time, so I just let the universe do its thing,” my therapist ironically said. So, he ghosted them. After listening to the voice of experience I came to an understandingー both sides of this coin are a form of dealing with the wash-up of displaced feelings, from the range of the receiving end to the human imposing this treatment. The act in itself has so many layers and is too broad of an experience to bottle up into a good vs. bad perspective…Also, it might be the only way the other person can process the situation because they don’t have the tools or energy to communicate by the necessary means.
In conclusion, after me extensively interviewing my therapist, (instead of him interviewing me like the usual), in the middle of my session I came to recognize different experiences and patterns that have come across my path and acknowledged that even the situationship I had to address, but kept postponing, was a product of this lack of perception that had strung me out more than I had known and I’m sure that others have experienced.
Maybe we should let all of our feelings out. Maybe we should request that urgent talk. Maybe we burn the letters. Maybe we should go running towards them fueled by the need for resolve. Flip the coin and take a chance. Or, maybe we shouldn’t and just leave things the way they are…and fade away from their life, suddenly and painfully?Just like a ghost.
‘Automat’ by Edward Hopper