There are places that hold ghosts. Not in the demonic sense, but in the mnemonic. The places I go where my memory begins to shift to think about someone in particular. A broken heart, a vested interest in a future that will never come. The places that hold ghosts call out to me in my sleep, whispering in my ear the lost words of love and hope.
These places that hold ghosts do so with a common whiplash, a supernatural stalking. An emotional conjuring.
I find myself attracted to these places, almost as if I am being possessed by an entity. And lately it indeed feels like I am. These emotions I am thinking, I am feeling, I am corrupted with have been a mental load that is almost too much to bear.
Deep poetry and philosophy aside, I do find myself continuously upset at being human. I rationalize, intellectualize, fall back to logic, and other coping techniques to deal with the pain of heartbreak. But nothing is a solution, an escape, a surefire antidote to the plague of emotions.
On August 14, 2025, after a very quick and tidy relationship, I experienced, for the first time, being ghosted. This pseudo-novelty of the current era had never happened to me before, expressing my young nature as a human on this planet. For what precisely is ghosting? It has nothing to do with the supernatural per se, and yet everything to do with the supernatural; that is, that existing outside of the natural bounds of reality.
In the before times, we had very, very tight tribes. This meant that the deep relationships we had with others were utterly crucial to our survival. More so for romantic relationships, where our predilection for partners stems from the selfishness of our genes needing to be propagated. Attaining a deep connection with a romantic, it was thought, was almost a surefire way to maintain the species. The only way this person could “leave” in this way was by dying. Now, I’ve never experienced death, but I can imagine it doesn’t feel good. The confusion of the person or people never coming back, the futures you’ll never have, the memories that feel lost and useless because the person is not there. But grief shows us the depth of love. The deeper the grief, the deeper the love. In a very proportional way.
Jumping to modern day, the grief we experience isn’t with someone who is dead. Though, they might as well be, because we lose all access to them and their lives. As I got ghosted, even after reaching out, there was a deep sense of confusion. She’s not dead, but she’s not with me. She simply exists outside of the parameters of my reality. This made no sense, because literally the day before, she existed in my world, interacting and living with no assumption or hint that this would be the last time we’d ever speak.
Though, when interacting with the idea of her, it’s preposterous to think about the fact that she’s out there, and I just don’t have access to her. It’s a very novel thing. Maybe not novel for the human race, but novel in the way that you can check up on someone’s life through social media and see them living and see them being happy, dating other people, moving on, and having no part or say in it. It’s strange to see them seemingly happy and well even though the closure conversation was absent and may never happen. It’s incredibly awkward to put yourself through self-harm behaviours of checking their page, their stories, their followers, etc, and feeling horrible for doing so afterwards.
This situation has allowed me to explore a very certain and existential emotion. That of which I call the Thought of Impermanence. Essentially, I find a bizarre confusion on the fact that someone can enter your life with passion and tenacity. They can make plans with you, integrate you into their family and future, and then suddenly, without warning or compassion, leave and never explain. You two won’t ever meet again (maybe down the line), but you will never be the same people. You will both move on, see other people, fall in love, have children, and die; and that’s life! That’s the strangeness of impermanence.
People like my good friends Jamie and Alex look at me when I’m explaining this problem and say, “it gets easier with time” (Alex) or “nothing is permanent, everything is impermanent” (Jamie). And still, I find myself drifting asleep to this emotion, struggling to comprehend the vastness of life and the audacity of never speaking to someone again.
Seriously, do we ever think about this deeply at all? You can meet someone and then never talk to them again? Is that not absolutely, utterly, incredibly fucking bizarre? That you can share such a deep connection with someone, only for that connection to be severed and never explained, never remedied, never taken care of again? Until death do us apart. This, to me, represents probably the biggest realization from the breakup. I don’t know for sure if I’m just broken-hearted right now, and after reading this after a month, I’ll cringe and wish I’d never written this — but I’ll never delete it, as I will always be intimate and raw on the internet.
Or maybe I’m hinting at something that is fundamental to humans, that I’ve never experienced, that everybody experiences, and that we don’t talk about. The things that go unsaid are some of the most tragic and lucid to me. We need to speak about these things more. I wish I learned this in school and not from YouTube videos and late night talks with Generative AI (don’t do this). Luckily, I have a great group of friends around me, so I can learn from very advanced thinkers on this subject, exploring traits like self-worth, attachment, the temporary body, the innocent child within us, and more.
This breakup has taught me a variety of things, all of which are beneficial to my being. First, that avoidants exist, and there are good reasons for their behaviour. They see intimacy as a claustrophobia, and choose to self-destruct relationships rather than working on them. They also choose to distance and avoid closure or confrontation even after things are separated, as a self-defence mechanism. Its taught me the pseudo-uncontrollable nature of my behaviour. That I’ve tried to continuously move on, and yet, felt like I couldn’t. One of the major breakthroughs I had recently was the realization that moving on isn’t a process or a journey; that’s healing. Moving on, for what it’s worth, is a choice, like anything else. Should I have coffee or tea? Should I go to this bar or that bar? Likewise for moving on, one day you can simply wake up and decide to move on. Thanks to Peter and Mamzi for this.
While the sadness of her going may lessen, and the understanding I will meet someone new will inevitably happen, the strangeness of absent connection (regardless of avoidance) is a struggle to comprehend. If I were in colloquial conversation, I would retort saying, “I bloody hate being human.” But what is there to hate? There is beauty in all of this.
That we met, is beautiful. That her and I achieved a deep connection, is beautiful. That we may never see each other again but still look back fondly on certain memories, is beautiful. That we will fall in love with other people, is beautiful. There is no sadness here. Only beauty. Because of this, I love being human. I love feeling these feelings, for the first time in a long time, so deeply and viscerally. To have your soul gripped and squeezed by the universe is the purest definition, to me, of being human.
And this is where the focal point of the post comes. The places that hold ghosts. These are not brick and mortar places like the bars we used to frequent, the cafes we used to grace, or the patterns we fell into which we adored as daily routines. Instead, the places that hold ghosts exist within me, not outside me. These places are my mind, my heart, my body, my energy field, my confidence, my love, my spirituality, and my appreciation for experiences.
Within me I hold these ghosts. Of a person that never existed. Of a person I no longer am. With this understanding I can do one of two things: step forward into growth, cleansing my spirit and turning towards more important matters and people, or step back into comfort, feeding these hungry ghosts with all the energy I have.
If you see this post, please know that I stepped forward.