A little change of pace from the doom and gloom posts of the last few weeks.

person in white robe standing on brown dried leaves during daytime — Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash

It’s happened to Everyone

Many of us have felt the ice-cold sting of being ghosted by a would-be friend. In a situation that seems to be growing increasingly awkward, I’ve become neighbors with a person who ghosted me in the past. This person also works as an editor at a very popular magazine.

I met them at an event where we met Tarana Burke who founded the MeToo movement and the queen of all second-wave feminists Gloria Steinem. For reasons unknown to me, she decided to cart me around as her platonic arm candy for a night–then vanish forever. We took pics together, we danced, we drank, and exchanged info. And that was it. I never heard from her again. My messages were left on read and my comments were left unliked. As a millennial, I know this means our friendship will not advance further and it’s fine. Been there, done that. I’ve done it to other people. No big deal.

Being Ghosted Isn’t Anything New

In previous generations, it was known as “tell them I’m not home” when someone was calling your home phone (which was weirdly plugged into your wall?? Yuck!) I imagine in other eras of human history, this was expressed by not writing back after receiving a handwritten letter. Ghosting has been around for a long time. We just made a cute term for it. Sometimes people just don’t want to give an honest reason why they don’t want to be around you. Maybe they just want to save your feelings? Or theirs?

The problem I’m facing is that I keep seeing this person in real life. They moved into my neighborhood and we’ve become neighbors. We see each other at least WEEKLY. I think we’ve bumped into each other six times so far. I look at them and give a slight grin as if to say, “I know I’ve been ghosted and I want to respect that. I’ll give you the power in this situation. If you’d like to say hello, I’ll say hello back.” I’ve done this six times and they’ve said hello three of those times and I return the friendly gesture. In one of these situations, I was with a friend. The friend, having no idea about the ghosting, asked how we knew each other. I stopped and gave her the usual grin but this time it said, “Okay. I’ve been ghosted. I can’t explain our origin story without mentioning this. How would you like to proceed?”

She looked at me then towards my friend and said, “Oh yeah! I know Lara! We go back!” My face curled up into a knot as I nodded and moaned the words, “Yeahhhhhh. We gooo back. Way. Back.” My brain started to heat up. Does this mean I’m not ghosted anymore? Should we try this again? We go way back means, I’ve enjoyed knowing this person the past few years, I remember this person, and I don’t mind that we will continue to know each other.

We said our goodbyes and I walked off wondering if I should reach out again. I still think she’s great. Maybe a little standoffish and a bit persnickety but great. We’re both queer journalists. Journalists AND queers stick together, right? I found her phone number in my phone and send a text message that went something along the lines of: “Hey! It’s been forever. Nice to see you in the neighborhood. I’d love to catch up.” Can you guess what happened next?

white ceramic teacup filled with ghost illustration coffee latte on white ceramic saucer beside maroon leaf photography — Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I was ghosted AGAIN

Today was our seventh encounter. This time at my favorite coffee shop. Headphones in. Typing away. Trying to make sense of the world while listening to On Dirait by Francois Hardy. I’m interrupted by a, “Hey!”. It’s her. At this point, I have accepted that we will forever be trapped in this social limbo. “Hi there!”, I say. The tension builds as no other words come out either of our mouths. Her latte must have taken 30 minutes to be prepared. I dug into my keyboard with Francois in my ear as if to say, “This is my turf and I don’t care if I’m ghosted or that about a million people on Instagram think you’re important. You can be cordial or fuck off. I was here first.”

She can find another coffee shop. ;)

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Ghosted: A Millennial's Tale