I think I am too old to understand ghosting. So much so, that I don’t even know if I am being ghosted. To be fair, I don’t know much of what’s happening right now, in this particular situation. Everything seemed to be normal, until everything stopped. For no obvious reason - at least not obvious to me. My gut feeling says that something changed, but it also says that this is not the end. The latter might be some wishful thinking, though. Maybe it is the end. Or maybe it hasn't even begun yet.
We need to consider entropy here: things that should happen will eventually happen, given time. In this situation, there wasn't any time for anything to happen, for good or for bad. We didn't have time to get to know each other properly. He didn't have time to get bored of me. And I didn't have time to fuck this up yet.* Logically, it's probably a case of bad timing. Too much happening and too many complications, from both sides. This all seem very clear to my mind.
But this is not how I usually feel. My heart aches, in the way it would if he would be gone forever, and would never ever come back. If he eventually does say hi again, my heart will insist on being surprised, and on telling me that I shouldn't trust it. It's a trap, a temporary last minute miracle, the calm before the storm. By storm I mean the inevitable catastrophic end of a friendship which hasn’t even begun yet. Because I already feel like I lost, before I even sit down to play.
This feeling of doomsday is not uncommon in my life. I default to thinking that everything will go wrong eventually, and that I will suffer exceedingly throughout the process. And it’s not only with new friends, I feel a similar way with Yogi. I can't sleep if he's out with his friends, because despite having no real rationale behind it, I have the constant feeling that my phone will ring at any minute with the news that he died in a worst case scenario type of way, like a nuclear war. Side note: if you think nuclear wars are serious, and I shouldn't joke about it, I genuinely feel like this. I am not joking.
I have the same feeling when I lie down in bed at night, before sleeping, wondering if I locked the door. If I haven't, I fear that someone will come in, in the middle of the night, and murder us both whilst we sleep. And it wouldn't be a quick and painless death, they would torture us and make us suffer. Again, I am not joking, and again, there is no logic behind this. I have never been held at gunpoint and I have never been tortured. Plus, I have forgotten to lock the door before, and nothing happened.
This feeling is fuelled by guilt, amongst other things, because even though I know in my mind that it will probably not happen, I feel in my heart that, in the unlikely but mathematically possible chance that it does, it will be my fault that it happened. That I should have taken it seriously, and I failed both myself and the person I love the most in this life for not being vigilant enough. But we are not gonna go into guilt today, because that is a whole other black hole, and today we are piloting this spaceship into another corner of the universe of my life.
This disconnect between what's logical for my mind, and how I feel in my heart, it bothers me immensely. For starters, it's like there are two people piloting a spacecraft that requires only one pilot, and they have completely different ways of doing so. But they are also not quiet, understanding and willing to make concessions. They both want things done their own way, and they will fight hard to get it. So there is no such thing as a smooth ride on this trip. Only that the trip is my whole life, all the time whilst I'm awake. And sometimes when I sleep.
This is made worse by the fact that I cannot process my feelings when I don't understand them. Things have to make sense to me, for me to be able to make sense of them. Or, in other terms, my heart and my mind have to be communicating very well for me to feel ok. It's one of the reasons I write: I have to vomit everything out of my heart in a medium that I can put in order. Like my feelings are the 1000 pieces of a puzzle. It may take time to find where they belong and who they connect to, but if I see them out in the open, I normally manage to get to the big picture. It's a process that has been tried and tested for me, and it works. But it’s not only the communication between them both that makes it work, it’s also the fact that I manage to find order in the chaos. That I can apply method, follow a structure, and there is consistency in the process and in the results. Order, method, consistency and structure soothe me as much as a peaceful coexistence between heart and mind.
I always knew this about myself, since I can remember. It’s one of the reasons I was drawn to science. And it’s definitely one of the reasons I fell in love with Poirot since the first time I laid my eyes on him, on a book. I only fell in love with a representation of Poirot when I was saw David Suchet bringing him to life, but I digress. Now, a few years into my life, I can name one of the culprits behind these, and many other things that I go through on a daily basis: OCD. And before you assume that my drawers at home must be really organised or that my clothes in the wardrobe are probably ordered in a colour gradient (neither is true), or that I wash my hands 57 times a day (I don’t), it is much more complicated than that. I won’t go into full TED Talk mode and give you a lesson, but I do encourage you to read about it. I have been. I have also been talking to people about it. Recently, one of my best friends told me about the concept of limerence. Reading how it manifests with OCD was like reading a description of myself, and the things I write about here. So much so that I could change the title of this blog to a diary about my limerence OCD.
Tell me if this doesn't sound familiar: I tend to go on a cycle, where I first start with an obsession - for example, that I am not good enough as a man. This leads to an anxiety of not being loved, accepted, or that I will be made fun of, I will lose and and I will get hurt. Obsessions are usually manifested through compulsions, and in this case those are seeking for validation from those who are foreign to the things I have normalised, like intimacy and queerness - aka typical masculine figures from the gym. A smile, a reply to a text, something that tells me that none of those things that give me anxiety will happen. That reassurance fuels that first obsession, and the cycle starts over. It also reinforces that idea I built that I need that validation to be safe. It was like that with bus stop guy, it was like that with new gym crush, and with many others before.
Interestingly enough, after a while it goes away. And it’s not something as predictable as an old crush being replaced by a new one. It usually fades away on its own. I don’t know if I can pinpoint exactly why, but I think it may have something to do with, ironically, the pragmatism and logical thinking that probably comes as part of the whole OCD package. Maybe when I realise that this will amount to nothing, that they are not into me, that I won’t get anything from them, I move on. I know how valuable my time is to have it wasted on nonsense that will lead to a dead end, but I also don’t make bets where I have low chances of winning. If the situation looks like a losing game, that’s my cue to leave the table.
There’s a lot more to dig here, but ultimately, learning about these concepts made me feel seen, but it was also liberating. To be able to name something I felt for a long time is already a way to find order amongst the chaos, but also to see that it’s not just me being someone messed up for no reason… I don’t celebrate having OCD or limerence, and whilst I haven’t been formally diagnosed with either as of today, I know where to start. I know where to pull the thread, if I want to improve my mental health.
A few weeks back I started therapy - to be precise, cognitive behaviour therapy. It hasn’t been anything life altering, but I never expected it to be. It has been extremely helpful though, and I am taking a lot from it. I am also seeing concrete results. Most importantly, I am understanding a lot about myself, and it has given me comfort to know that there is nothing “wrong” with me. I am "normal". It’s just how my mind works. And that's kinda reassuring. These are the cards I was dealt with, and I have to find a way to make the most of them during the game.
And maybe this is the reason I started this text in a less doomsday tone. This guy has the potential of being my next limerence OCD cycle, or maybe he already was. Maybe it happened and died down like with the others. Or maybe it hasn’t even started yet. Maybe he will be a friend, not an object of limerence - he is definitely less foreign and more normalised to me than gym jocks.
I don’t know if I will ever hear from him again. And if I do, I don’t know if it will bring me into the cycle. But right now, I am trying not to think about it, nor to map out the hypothetical future our friendship may or may not have, despite how my control freak nature and my need to order and consistency is asking me to. He might write me back, he might not. We might build a friendship, we might not. I will survive either way.
It’s not easy to see it, and I am terrified of being this casual. But I think that, in the long run, it will be better. It might be too late to have any effect on this friendship. But I think I myself can benefit from it.for sure. And maybe it’s time for me to be the one who makes myself feel good, for a change.
Maybe it’s also time to stop listening to Low Roar.
David - Low Roar
* I think I should expect a punch in the arm next time I see a good friend who I am not naming here. Different friend from the one who told me about limerence. Also worth nothing that I am vehemently against any kind of violence, physical or otherwise, and I would not accept it from anyone in my life. But I allow it from this friend because he does have a point: he once punched me when I was unkind to myself; I complained, so asked me "if you don't like someone hurting you, why do you do it to yourself?" Can't argue with his logic. Damn Germans and their logic. Also, he doesn't hurt me. It's a more like light, symbolic punch. Besides, we talked about this recently, and he asked me if being ghosted would lead me to write about it. I guess my friends know me well...
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