I’ve always thought ghosting was a terrible thing to do to someone, and now that I’ve experienced it for the first time I know for sure how fucked up it is.

We went on multiple dates and everything was going great (or was it? that’s the type of doubt ghosting puts in your head), we had no issues in person or in text, but more than no issues we seemed to have a lot of chemistry and things in common. Then one day she never texted me back again. I spend a fucking week agonizing over it. Will she text me back? Maybe she’s just busy! (Too busy to take 30s from her week to say “Hey, I’m a bit busy and don’t feel like texting. I’ll let you know when I have time”?) Should I text her again or is it better to wait? I did text her once more - a few days after, when I saw something that I wanted to share with her and thought it was a good opportunity to restart the conversation, give her another chance to reply. She never responded.

I’ve seen so many excuses for it, and none of them are valid. Maybe two:

1. You are in an actively abusive relationship and so you just disappear.

2. You are in a comma.

No other reason justifies it. Afraid the other person won’t take it well? You can still block them afterwards and go no contact, but that’s not ghosting anymore because you actually gave them closure. I doubt any psycho out there is thinking “damn, they ghosted me. I guess they really mean it then, as opposed to if they just told me they’re not interested anymore”. Some people say “I don’t owe anyone anything” - yeah, neither does anyone else, but we still hold doors for strangers because it’s the decent fucking thing to do, jackass. Just like it’s basic fucking curtsy to tell someone when you’re no longer interested in talking to them instead of leaving them to figure it out.

One way or another, I have to deal with the rejection. The difference is that if I get ghosted then I also have to go through a horrible period of agony before dealing with the rejection (how long varies case by case), and in the end there’s also humiliation on top. Humiliation that comes from the realization that while I was agonizing over her, she had probably already forgotten me and moved on. It’s humiliating and makes it me feel like trash.

And it’s fucking poisonous as well. At least if the connection was short lived and all positive, because there’s no negative to grab on to. All my memories of the situation are positive. Or at least they seemed that way to me, but this is the kind of poisonous toxic doubt that ghosting leaves you in. Because I can’t think of any negatives, now I’m paranoid about what I might have said or done, and whenever I go on another date I’ll be hyper-aware and super self conscious about everything I do and say. I won’t be able to fully relax and be myself, and if it happens again I might just ended shielding myself and become incapable of making connections out of a fear it will keep happening.

The only certainties I have is that the last week was agony, and now I’ll carry the scar with me for at least the next few dates I go on. For some people these periods of time are much longer.

And all this could have been solved with a simple “Hey, I’m sorry but I’m not really interested in pursing this anymore, so I want to end things here.” If she had done that, I could have gone through the grieving period a week ago and completely skipped the agony and trust issues.

But do you know what the real sad thing is? Who the real fucking loser is? Me. Because if tomorrow she messaged be with some bullshit excuse and asked me to meet again, I’d probably agree to it in a heart beat and shove the memories of this past week deep down, along with all feelings relating to it.

Fuck ghosts.