I KNOW I’M AN A****** FOR GHOSTING

I’m barely an average guy which is why I’m thinking as I wrote this, “Why would anyone care about what I had to say?”

Well for one thing, it doesn’t matter if anyone would care or not, and another, there’s always the option of just scrolling past and trust me, I think it’s better off that this blog, confession or entry or whatever this is, is just left to sink at the deepest abyss of the internet.

I know some of you had been “Ghosted” before. Others more than once. And if you don’t already know what “Ghosting” is, then here’s a simple explanation: it’s when a person you constantly interact with suddenly disappears from your life. We try to understand why that particular person ghosted us. And most of us are consumed by anxiety, eating away at our thoughts until we are left with nothing but self-loathing and questions that more or less begin with What-have-I-done or What-did-I-do to—et cetera, et cetera.

I’ve seen many informative articles, blogs and even comic strips that show the pain of being ghosted. And most of what I’ve seen is leaning heavily to self-care. That mental wellness comes first. That if you feel like a person is toxic in your life, then by all means, you have the right to disappear without explanation. By right, by self-care, you can do it. And that’s true. However, it’s undeniable that you could damage the person you’re ghosting as most of you probably experienced when you were ghosted. You were probably hurt and spent random times in a day wondering if ever that person would text you or show up outside your house.

But I’m not here to justify myself for ghosting or any of that. I’m just here to rant in public…to somehow take this load off my chest than let it fester. I know I’m an a****** so you could just call me that. Call me anything you like, I’m an assortment of cowardice, heart-breaker and a waste of space. Even trash has more use than me.

I wasn’t the prodigal son or an A plus student. I was always the quiet kid in class who sat at the furthest back seat. But make no mistake, I was not a loner. At every year of high school, I had a group of close friends whose faces seemed to wane after the moving up ceremony. My high school had a sort of ranking system for every year. Our grade point average determined which class we would be seated in and we had over forty classes for each year of high school. This ranking system is what created an elitist and hierarchical mentality among students. If you were thrown on lower classes, the upper ones would snob and bully you. Most of the friends I had made in my freshman year only climbed up the rank while I descended lower ever so surely. In my fourth year, the ones I considered close and dear to me would not even talk to me as if they were embarrassed to be associated with me. I had many one-sided greetings. Yet somehow in social media, they were so interactive. Perhaps it was just the trend to accumulate friends for more likes on their pictures and statuses. I never understood their zeal for that kind of thing. But I saw how they were consumed by the number of thumbs-up on their photos.

At that time, I had over a thousand friends on Facebook and the ones I truly knew could be counted by two hands. But there were sweet memories I cherished in that crowded social media platform—strangers I developed relationships with through common interests. But I must say now that they were the first people I ghosted. Do I regret it? Immensely. Would I change what I did? No. Regret is a complicated feeling and just because it lingers doesn’t necessarily mean I would want to change what happened.

I… hurt someone before I disappeared. So badly that strangers began sending me messages…threats about the mistake I had done. Apparently, the girl whose heart I had obliviously broken had many suitors she did not entertain. Yet when it came to me, she was so willing to spend late nights just talking about random things. And somehow, that immediately became my fault. Somehow, it became a violation to not reciprocate her feelings—these were the implications of her crestfallen suitor. I did not feel safe having a stranger send me messages about finding me and teaching me a lesson. I just turned fifteen at that time so I was afraid and I only felt safe by disappearing completely. So I deleted my Facebook account and created another with a pseudonym. This time, selecting the people I truly know to be my friends. And it did not last long.

This new Facebook account I had created only served to become a catalyst of my already fucked up understanding of human relationships. I wasn’t always so estranged. I used to be so…friendly? Outgoing? In a room full of strangers, I would be the one to initiate conversations and make friendships. That’s who I was until I realized that not all people want to be friends with me. In my early days of high school, I was dubbed “Stalker” precisely because of that making-friends-with-everyone behaviour. Many people bit that name for me until I just became the quiet kid, friends only to those who approached me. So I guess that’s where my alienation from human feelings began.

This is something I never noticed before. When someone would randomly approach me, I would only realize that they were flirting months after the incident and by then, they would have long lost their interest in me. But it’s not like it mattered since I wasn’t so eager about relationships. Maybe this is another reason why I constantly ghost people. I’m used to having temporary faces in my life and when I begin to notice that the people are serious about staying, I’m the one who leaves.

My best friend straight up told me I’m an a****** in front of my face. And I agree with her. And the words didn’t hurt but the way she said it. There was so much contempt in her face just recoiled in there, like a rubber band stretched to its limit and was about to snap. I felt that from her expression and I don’t blame her. I couldn’t. She’s very mad about assholes who ghost women. In my defence, I just don’t ghost women. I ghost people in general. I’m not a womanizer. I could barely hold up a conversation. I can’t see myself being flirty. But she wants me to stop this habit of mine…

I acknowledge it has become a habit. Last year alone, I ghosted two people. And I can’t deny that I’m planning to ghost my best friend too. Not just her. Everybody I ever knew. Even my family. I’m leaving next month for work. It’s five hundred miles from home—in a city where nobody knows who I am. I want to restart my life though I know that’s just a distant dream. There will always be people behind me, aching to know about my situation. But I can’t really tell them why I want to disappear.

I’ve been asking myself why I ghost people and I can’t pinpoint why exactly. It’s just that I want to. And when I do it, I feel so guilty and regretful but I also feel so free. I’ve already had a point where I wanted to take my life and I’m not going to discuss it because even I cringe at the idea. Running away from everybody who ever knew me gives me the liberation from pain. It hurts me but it’s a small price to pay for comfort. It’s like choosing the lesser of two evils. Ghosting people hurts me but not doing it hurts me even more.