“The soldiers settled down to filling and lighting their clay pipes. They continued to ignore him as if he were a ghost and they could not see him. Perhaps he was in a dream. Or perhaps he was a ghost; perhaps he was dead already. How would you know if you were dead?” - Peter Behrens, The Law of Dreams
When someone ghosts us, one of the hardest parts, whether we choose not to ask them why or whether they choose not to answer, is that we are left with the question, “Why?”
Like a tongue constantly going to touch a chipped tooth, our mind goes to the place they used to occupy in our psyche and our lives, touching the absence over and over as if touching it enough times would convince us that they’re really gone.
But, somehow the tongue is never convinced.
The memory of the presence of the intact tooth (or relationship) is somehow more real than the reality of what’s no longer there.
Ghosting is commonly understood as when you pull away or vanish without explaining what's going on, leaving the other person to guess at what it meant and, very likely, feeding into whatever insecurities they may have.
I want to offer a different perspective on ghosting in relationships.
So, we often look at ghosting as the action taken by the one leaving. Ghosting therefore describes their manner of leaving and not much else. And this modern culture, with its lack of close knit communities and online dating (where we meet people outside of our existing social networks, is the perfect set up for ghosting to occur.
But, what if we looked at ghosting as what we are doing to the other person?
What if it's not so much that we are the one ghosting but that, by our actions, we are turning the person we are leaving into a ghost? We have tremendous power over each other.
If the love given to the Velveteen Rabbit can make him real, then that realness can be withheld as well and real things can be made less so.
If you have ever been shunned, you know this. It's a viscerally felt thing to have someone look right through you. By the way we treat each other we grant each other existence or we take it away.
Don't believe me? Try solitary confinement.
Don't believe me? Don't touch a baby until it's one year old. It likely won't last that long. If it does it may be damaged for life.
Don't believe me? Wait until someone ghosts you and see how together you feel.
I'm not saying you can't work through it. I'm saying it gives you something to work through.
Consider the constant graciousness of this world: when you walk on soil, your foot leaves a print. Another way of saying this is that the soil allows your foot to make an impression on it. When you run your hand through water, it makes ripples and swirls. Another way to say that is that the water allows this. Branches move for you. Wind blows around you. Nature is constantly affirming to you that you are real and present in this world by letting itself be impacted by you. This seems trivial, like nothing. But imagine that nature rescinded this deepest of hospitalities? Imagine that your feet left no marks in the soil, that leaves wouldn't lift when you kicked them, that the apple wouldn't give way to your teeth or that the candle flame wouldn't recognize your breath. Imagine what that would make you. It would make you into a ghost.
How would you know if you were dead? By those things.
Imagine no human would acknowledge you on top of that. Imagine that when you died, no one came to your funeral, or cried, or spoke of you... it would be as if you'd been a ghost your whole life. Like you'd never really been there.
How would you know if you were dead? By those things too.
My friend Dawn put it this way in sharing what is, I believe, some traditional Mexican wisdom. “There are three human deaths. The first, when you know you are dying. All reality expands, distinguishing only the very vital heartbeats to the closing of the gate. The second is the passage, the leaving, the place from which you will not be retrieved. The third is the last time someone speaks your name. To me, ghosting is a prompting of the third death, and it contributes to the subjected person experiencing a personal death.”
In a very real way, our existence is much more in the hands of others than we'd like to think. And, similarly, others existence is in our hands. We have the power to grant it or take it away.
When we vanish on others with no explanation, it's not us that becomes the ghost. It's the person we're leaving. It's what we turn them into.
“I’m sorry for the ghost I made you be. Only one of us was real and that was me.” - Leonard Cohen
Not to bring up my sob story, but i was ghosted by my best friend of 15 years on my wedding day. He was the best man and he left before speech time and i never saw him again, except in my dreams. It was so painful, like a soul scar that yes, I've had to work through.
10 years later and I'm fine. I cant say i have fully forgiven him, but i see how his absence from my life created space for me to grow, to move away from having one great friend to having several good friends, from leaving a career he condoned to choosing a holistic path outside the norms that made me happy.
In a way, his disappearance was a dagger to the heart. But in the aftermath of turning into a "ghost", i could be reborn again into a new version of myself, one where i have thrived!
Life is full of surprises and lessons along the way. I've become wiser and stronger and know my value, not from designation outside my self, but through the joy and kindness of a heart willing to heal, and love again.
It’s important to acknowledge the power we hold on the opposite end of the spectrum too; to truly see someone; perhaps as no one has seen them before, has the power to bring them more to life than ever before. 👁 💃🏽 I have much more to say about this. Thank you Tad. Recently I have been inadvertently ghosting an old friend, as I feel us growing apart, but it’s too painful to acknowledge that. Your words make me reassess, and honour her need to be seen.