Day 29

I have ghosted. Ghosting is something that I do. I ghost.

To be quite clear, I have been ghosted before as well. I know what it feels like. I know what it’s like to feel the pull of trying to get closure, to attempt to understand if the other person “actually cared” about what we had and not get any.

I know what it feels like and yet I still do it.

The most recent time I ghosted was also the most wide-reaching. I disappeared on social media, going so far as to deleting certain accounts. I stopped responding to messages from many acquaintances, several friends and some family members. Eventually messages from people that demanded to know what’s going on with me turned to messages expressing worry and concern. And eventually those disappeared too.

At the time, I felt impotent in the face of their questions. I felt helpless. I myself barely understood what was going on in my life and yet people demanded answers and clarification from me. I knew that if I had just carried on, came through and gave my friends and family something, they would still be here, and I would still be surrounded by people who cared.

Now after a year I am sat here looking metaphorically at the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the shore overlooking all my burnt bridges. Finally enough time has passed. Things are always clearer in hindsight and now I can see. I still don’t have any actual answers to anything, nothing is coherent but my head is clearer and I feel I am at last ready to explore those questions and get somewhere close to coherency. Or at least I want to. And even though I have fewer emotional connections to people than I had a year and a half ago, the ones that are still there are real and they count.

And I also have you.

_{Image: Elizabeth Bourne/The Norwegian American}