Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
I’ve been ghosting people long before the word was a thing. Back then, we didn’t call it “ghosting,” it was more like a silent exit—less spooky, more socially acceptable (or so I told myself). But there’s an art to ghosting, a delicate dance that not everyone masters. And frankly, some of us probably shouldn’t even be on the floor.
There were the good ones—the friends I let slip because I got lazy. I didn’t hold onto them, not because they weren’t worth it, but because it takes effort to maintain relationships. And I thought I had endless time. Turns out, time ghosts us all eventually.
Then there were the people who I kept around, probably longer than I should have, thinking they were amusing or just there. In hindsight, maybe I was a glutton for punishment. It’s funny how we sometimes cling to the people we should be ghosting and ghost the ones we should have held closer.
Now, ghosting feels like a cop-out, a little Oingo Boingo “Dead Man’s Party” in action. It’s dancing around responsibility, cowardly even. Yet there’s no denying its appeal. It’s easier to disappear than to have the tough conversations or say, “I’ve outgrown this.”
But in ghosting, you also miss the lessons of closure, of confronting discomfort, and of being brave enough to let someone go the right way. In truth, maybe ghosting shouldn’t happen at all. I used to think ghosting was freedom, but maybe it’s just another way of avoiding growth.
Lesson learned: The art of ghosting is really the art of running. And sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is stop dancing and have the conversation you’ve been avoiding all along.
Categories: Culture, identity, mental health, Pop Culture, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
As someone who always tries to be a kind, thoughtful, and not overbearing friend, but has been ghosted multiple times without warning or provocation, I find it to be a confusing and hurtful thing to do. I have never done so and would never treat another human being that way. Nor would I dump a friend directly unless they were truly cruel or consistently stepped across very clear boundaries I had communicated. I believe that people in our modern society have come to treat people as temporary and disposable, and such thoughtless friend dumping or ghosting reflects that.
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As that great philosopher Taylor Swift says “sometimes giving up is the strong thing” 😀
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Hehe Dear Miriam never had a desire to Ghost someone
Yet Back in the Working World i Surely Never Had the Energy
to Make FRiENDS Outside of Work and of course within the
Walls of Work That Are Usually Acquaintances
Dear Lord after Public Dancing 11 Years All
21,566 MiLes After a Saturday Night and
All Day Sunday Dance Still Moving on to
Walmart After the Mall And Finishing
A Whole Book in Barnes and Noble
While Listening to Meditative Music
And Entertaining the Star Bucks
Cafe College Study Crowd there
Hehe For Some Payback for Just
Another Free Book Read on a Sunday Afternoon
Yep With Walmart and Publix to Go After Consuming
A Whataburger And a Free Senior Cup of Coffee Attached
to this Laptop in Whataburger Now With the Dunbar Limit Number
of 150 Successful Regular Human Interactions and 5 Close FRiENDS
A Wife And a Sister And Her Wife is Surely Enough with Literally Hundreds
Yes Thousands of Other Interactions With Folks Who Are More Familiar With me
Than Them
True i Used to Be
A Ghost Wandering the
Earth Yep the Phantom of the
Opera and the Hunchback of Notre
Dame Shut in Ill in my Home 66 Months WHere Every
Connections Even at Home Was Excruciating in Pain
And Numb
Oh Gosh There
Was no Way to Connect then
Dear Lord Every Connection is
Holy and Sacred Now as i Was THE GHOST THEN
Yes the
Living Dead
No more No More No
More…
With
SMiLes Now…
Not Here to Receive
Only HeaR to Give True
Sort of the Opposite of ‘Hotel TRuMP California”
Yet true never need a Body Guard And Such Orange Yuck!
AND
iDo
my Own Stunts
Nope Not Ashamed
to Weigh 250 Pounds hehe Besties With Gravity
Floating Weight of Finger Tips Greatest of Wu Wei Ease
It’s True When You Defy Gravity Folks Tend Not to Forget You Hehe…
EVER…
Dear Lord Being
CEO of Several
Health Clinics
in New York New York
It’s Amazing to me You even
Have a Second to Write a Blog…
iSurely Couldn’t Do SuperWoman Like You
Nope
iONly Play..:)
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I’m an SPA (a self-published author).
I’m also disabled, and have little energy, so I have been looking for people to pay for doing some of the marketing and PR, for me to goose my sales and find the readers who like my kind of mainstream literary fiction, and aren’t afraid to try indies (many readers let the traditional publishers tell them what to read).
I know all of that.
I also know that what I write and what I am are unique, and marketable, and come as a result of putting in the work.
So far, four different companies/people, to whom I’ve told my aspirations and goals, have literally ghosted me. In exchange for me daring to be candid and realistic and accurate one more time, I get… crickets.
It’s starting to hurt my feelings – and to make me wonder if it’s me?
Then I go back through the good, long, literate reviews on both Pride’s Children novels on Amazon and Goodreads, and the people who have said very nice things, and don’t wonder if it’s me.
But I’m not tapping into the right marketing person/company? Hope that’s it.
I can’t tell you how many lovely people I’ve met out ‘there’ and how they buoy me up, but it doesn’t spread.
First, finish the trilogy.
Then rechannel my tiny bit of energy into figuring out why (other than billions of books out there) people who read my KIND of fiction are so hard to reach.
Maybe – I have to admit the possibility – it IS me.
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