Ghosting is a highly divisive, aggressive, even political act that sets up domination of one person over another, pits one person against another, or one group against one person for reasons that are often unclear, non-sensical, whimsical (meaning, for sport). - Elissa Altman
This post gave me chills. In part because it so vividly describes the painful experience of being ghosted, which has happened to me at several stages of my life, and gives me a sort of sadness that people do these things to one another. More deeply, though, reading these words rekindled memories from the young, confused, and wandering person that I was in my late teens and early twenties. It put images into my head of people I have ghosted, and brought back the intense feelings of pain and bewilderment that led me to do it. I wrote about one of these incidents shortly after my autism diagnosis. Re-reading it now I can feel myself trying to make sense out of my past behavior given this new insight about how my brain works differently than other people’s brains. Autism is not an excuse for behaving in this way, but it does help me understand how I was processing the swell of emotions and new experiences I was encountering at the time.
Elissa Altman’s description of ghosting made me think of another time, at the end of my senior year of college, when so much was happening to me, around me, and inside of me, that I was in a state of turmoil that I dealt with by alternately drinking excessively with friends, or hiding in my dorm room. My years on our small New England campus had been mostly solitary ones, feeling ostracized and rejected by my fellow students, up until the last six months when I suddenly discovered a group of people I felt a connection to, and they introduced me to alcohol, and made me feel like I belonged.
And then I met someone in the weeks before graduation. Her name was Jennifer. I’d seen her around, but we’d never had a class together, never met, never interacted in any way. Somehow we started talking, Maybe it was because I worked behind the reserves desk in the library. Then we saw each other at a party. I walked her home, both of probably drunk. We sat down on the stoop of her dorm building and talked, and talked until the sun came up. Then we kissed. Over the next week we had a few more long conversations. We kissed a couple of times. She said things like, “I can’t believe we didn’t meet each other until the last weeks of college.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I agreed with her. I wanted to believe what she believed. I wanted to feel what she seemed to be feeling. But I didn’t feel anything, or I didn’t know what I was feeling. I wanted to play along, but I got scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how I felt, but I knew I couldn’t continue to get to know Jennifer. I didn’t have the words to tell her anything. I didn’t know how to explain what I was feeling, or even understand it myself. I was overwhelmed, and I shutdown. For me, shutting down meant staying in my dorm room, unplugging the phone from the wall (the primary means of communication in the 90s), and not answering the door if anybody knocked. It was less than a week until graduation.
Outside my room, in the hall, I could hear the sounds of college seniors celebrating their approaching graduation. The loud music, the groups of friends talking and laughing at all hours, the pattering of footsteps up and down the stairs as people found their friends, gathered, and embarked on little adventures. I stayed in my room, emerging when I though the coast was clear for a bathroom visit, or to get some food from the dining hall. Or occasionally visiting with one of my friends from Eastern Europe down the hall who seemed to understand me in a way others didn’t.
I was in bed one particularly loud evening, trying to fall asleep amid the noise of people who would be up all night having fun with one another during their last days together. It wasn’t late, but it felt like a reasonable time to be trying to sleep, even if I was the only one on the hall attempting to do so. There was a knock at the door. It startled me. I didn’t have many visitors, and having someone knock while in bed during a time when everyone else is awake is somewhat embarrassing. The only option that occurred to me was to pretend I was asleep. Whoever it is probably has the wrong door, I though. They knocked again. Whoever it is can’t know I’m in here, I thought. I’m not pretending to be asleep, I’m pretending to be in the library, or out at a party as I should be. “I know you’re in there!” Jennifer’s voice called from the hall, her knocking turning into more of a banging. I froze. My heart beat faster. She’ll leave in a minute, I though. She stayed, knocking, calling my name. She can’t really know you are in here, I told myself. If I was out, she’d be knocking and no matter how long she knocked I wouldn’t hear her. She knocked, and knocked. I was determined. Finally, she gave up.
The next morning, when I awoke long before anybody else on the hall, I found a letter that Jennifer had slid under my door. I was nervous to read it, not wanting to remember her visit from the night before. I had many feelings competing with each other, but none of them were about Jennifer as a person. I had no dislike for Jennifer, I had no negative feelings about her at all. I thought she was wonderful and had enjoyed the moments we shared together. I was embarrassed. Not because I acted like an ass, but because I felt caught in my abnormal behavior of wanting to sleep while everyone around me celebrated in one another’s company. I was confused. I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing. I had no explanation for wanting to hide in my room when I could be spending time with a beautiful young woman who seemed to care about me. I was sad about everything that hadn’t happened in college, and excited it was finally over, but wondering if I had done it wrong, if I had somehow messed up my college experience and missed out on all the things that everyone else had loved. I knew that I didn’t seem to enjoy most of the things other people did for fun, but I didn’t know that that was OK. And here I was, in the final days, actively continuing the behavior that I knew made me strange, resisting participating even as there were literal knocks on my door pleading with me to come out.
The reasons for my actions were unclear, and non-sensical, and probably appeared whimsical when I reflect on it. But I didn’t understand that I was being divisive, or aggressive, or political, or hurtful. I had no explanation for my behavior, and though I deeply cared for many people, including Jennifer, I lacked the empathy to consider the impact my behavior may have had on others. I generally thought that if I disappeared from somebody they would be relieved and thankful not to have to deal with me anymore. The idea that they would be hurt felt unthinkable. I didn’t like myself enough to consider that someone else could be hurt by my absence. Someone knocking on my door wasn’t a clue to me that they wanted to see me, that they cared about me. In the way some people with restrictive eating disorders won’t accept any amount of evidence that they need to gain weight rather than keep losing it, I seemed unable to believe that my withdrawal from somebody’s life would be distressing to them, even if they told me so directly.
I was overwhelmed and confused. I was desperately trying to understand what was happening to me, what the feelings exploding in my body were trying to tell me, why I felt so much love for people and at the same time wanted to run away from them, why I felt that being part of a group was the most important thing, but also had no desire do so. What I couldn’t see at the time was the difference between how I felt and what I wanted from what I thought I was suppose to feel, or suppose to want. I was not yet able to recognize the pattern that I engaged in, of finding people who had qualities that I felt I should admire, then trying to change myself to be more like them, to be part of their group, to be accepted by them. Then, suddenly, feeling overwhelmed and upset and wanting to run away and go back to my previous routine of quietly pacing alone around the perimeter of a fountain that continually spouted water, geyser-like into the air, drowning out everything with the uniquely numbing noise of water falling into itself over and over again.
I feel this Sam, especially your last paragraph. I just distanced myself from an amazing group, full of people I admire. They admired me back. But the core differences between what I notice and value vs what majority seem to prioritise is too stark -- it hurts and confuses me to this day.
Beautiful! So evocative and I relate to so much. I also did a lot of hiding in my room, especially in halls, mixed with a lot of drinking. I would have too much fun and then be so ashamed I would get trapped in my room, unable to come out and rejoin in with people without the heightened scenario of a night out. I just couldn't seem to find the middle ground of hanging out! I remember inviting people over for a roast while drunk and full of social confidence and then hiding in my room all day, just hoping they wouldn't have taken me seriously. If I remember rightly, they all came over and I had to finally come out of my room and I think maybe i just didn't mention it. If only I had thought of laughing it off, but that was impossible!
You show a lot of insight and understanding here. About how overwhelming it was to be so in the thick of it, all the interior experience and the exterior experience. The university education and the social education. No wonder it was so challenging!
I related also to your lack of self esteem making you accidentally callous. That was my thing, also. I felt so much and so would have imagined myself high in empathy but in fact I struggled to consider how others felt. There was no room sometimes as I was so flooded by my own feeling! Certain things also didn't occur to me, like that others experienced the world differently to me. For a long time I believed everyone was secretly delighted when the social meet was cancelled, for instance...
Thanks for sharing. As usual, I think to mysekf, oh I will write a post in response to this! Because your reflective writing makes me feel so inspired.