Ghosting and friend breakups

So many things have been going on lately but I’m just happy I don’t have to tackle my brain to write articles for my blog. It’s been a while innit? And yes, now I’m British, how amusing.

Ghosting, everyone has some way or another ghosted someone or been ghosted. If you ghost people, respectfully jump off a cliff. If you have been ghosted, welcome to the club. Ghosting to those who don’t know it is basically ending all communication and contact with another person without any apparent warning or justification and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate. And for those who are wondering, yes I picked that definition up from google. 

But in simple Sahana terms, it’s someone not replying for a long period of time without any apparent reason, even if they’re online whatever. It can be that they just don’t want to talk to you at all, or at the moment. 

So this is where double texting comes in hand. So double texting for those people who don’t know it (please get out of your rock) is basically sending one text and then following up with another one before you even get a response to your first message. Conversations are basically supposed to be reciprocal like: 

Zed: Hi

Sahana: hey what’s up 

Zed: Nothing much how are you 

So it’s like you say something, the other person replies but in double texting you say something and the person doesn’t reply for hours or days. So, you text again, without any shame because we didn’t have any in the first place.

So you’re essentially doing more part. In recent times, double texting is really bad but I still do it. Because YOLO but that’s the problem, you only live once. 

Around a few hours ago, I was pacing around my very messy room before a math exam hesitating if I should double text a dude I happen to like. Let’s call him, Suf. This went on for a good hour. I originally thought of sending something, and sent it to a fellow friend for correction/review and she immediately rejected it and said it was too cold, so she crafted an exquisite text: 
heyy why arent u texting 

Yeah, I know. This text is exactly what I didn’t want to send. This text is needy, desperate and down bad all in one. Like yes, I am all of those things but we don’t expose that. She told me to just YOLO it but that’s the problem. Because you essentially only have one chance and if you messed this chance up, you don’t get another one, and on the other hand you only live once so there’s no point spending so much time and energy pacing around your room deciding whether to send it or no. 

And yes I did finally send the text and cave in since I’m so shameless but I also changed my phone wallpaper to “yolo” to motivate me. 

Two weeks later, Suf blocked me everywhere, including Spotify… 

It hurt to say the least. I just figured that our friendship would last a bit longer than two weeks but that’s just me. We just had so much in common and suddenly watching it thrown away right in front of me, my heart pained. But this is life, society says.

I don’t care what society says, I don’t want to live life this way. I don’t want the great friendships I make go to vain because even if me and Suf weren’t the closest, he understood me and spoke with me everyday during that week and it meant the world to me. 

I kept asking myself, why are people so cruel? Why do good things have to end so horribly? And even though, I had temporary peace for that while, I wanted it to last longer. I don’t want temporary peace, just eternal friendship. 

I even searched on how to get over a friend breakup but barely found any results. 

Friend breakups are so rarely talked about, with romantic breakups always stealing the limelight. But something people don’t realise is, you can live without a romantic partner, rather many people do but it’s hard not to have delightful platonic company. There’s a well-worn formula for getting through a romantic breakup (ice cream, impulsive haircuts, hazy nights out with friends, assurances about fish in the sea). We throw divorce parties, for God’s sake. But there’s no blueprint for friendship divorces. Everybody talks about how hard it is to make friends, but nobody ever talks about how hard it is to lose them.

The problem with friendship is that we don’t make the unsaid said. We let things go, brush things off, tamp things down, all in the name of being a good friend. Even though we all know how important friendships are, the stakes with friendship always seem, somehow, lower. In a marriage, you’re forced to disentangle the knots. In a friendship, you can break out the scissors.

And if maybe me and Suf had talked this out, untangled the knots, we’d still be going strong. Friendship, as everyone looks at it, is supposed to be easier and we always just disregard it in one way or another. 

There’s no right or wrong conclusion, but something to remember is friendship is just as time consuming, painstaking and exhausting as romantic relationships. They are on the same level so why can’t we treat them the same? So, the next time you argue with your friend, think about what you would do if this was your partner. And that maybe could save your relationship. 

I hope you have a great day/night ahead! 

Sahana