PARADOX OF GHOSTING

 I AM RAMBLING AGAIN…

This has to be the most broken I have ever been in my whole life. It almost felt like I was immune to suffering or pain, especially the kind that deals with love, but I was wrong, and it sucks.

Life is full of paradoxes. It's ridiculous because before now, I could explain everything I know, understood everything I did, everything you did, and everything had a reason or another. An impact I could understand if I only spent some time researching. It was through this research that I learned about Zeno's Paradox, a theory introduced by Zeno himself, which questions the very nature of motion and change. Or Schrödinger's Cat, a thought experiment illustrating the complex nature of quantum mechanics and observation. These theories brought me back to reality—that no matter what I do, no matter how careful or calculative, there are things I am not immune to and, worst of all, things I might never fully understand. Look at you. You, the man before you, and the one before him have ghosted me before. I was meant to know better. I should have seen this coming, right?

I can never understand why you keep ghosting me, and maybe you don't understand it as well. I have gone through our chats, and I have a vivid recollection of everything I said, how I said it, and where I said it. I thought that since it had happened before, I had ticked all the boxes and kept communication sane.

Being ghosted feels like an enigma that leaves me stranded, with a zillion questions hovering around my head. Last night, I was struggling to lift my phone to my ear because the tears kept blurring my vision when I stumbled upon a tweet that claimed men love women who are wicked to them, saying it keeps them on their toes. This hit me hard, giving me memories of my mother, the woman who gave birth to her, her sisters, and the females they bore. Despite being generous with love and kindness, they never got to experience love that stayed. It explains why I might never find love, too, because, to me, love doesn't mean pretense, cowardice, dishonesty, or pain. Even though love is affection, that's not all there is to it. The love I was fed, taught, and understood is kind, vulnerable, consistent, and considerate. So when it leaves me anxious, worried, and looking over my shoulders, I am aware it isn't love.

When did we even come up with the concept of love bombing, and how is that the language you understand? A colleague, as curious as me, told me that anesthesia can delete or suppress memories. For a long while, the only thing I knew of anesthesia was that it's meant to relieve pain, relax muscles, and control psychological functions. I wanted to mention it to you the other day you kissed me fiercely. I still think of the kiss and keep wishing you will be the last person I will kiss. Do you remember the day you came and kept looking at me? How you looked at me like you were looking deep into my soul? For the first time in years, I texted Rahab to say I feel seen. These are memories I wouldn't want to be erased. Does anesthesia choose which memories it erases? Was I being love bombed?

I am learning that addiction isn't merely a failure of willpower but a complex brain disease that alters our decision-making processes. Am I clinging to this definition because it makes me feel better about my unhealthy addiction to you? Or am I just a hypochondriac, feigning sickness so you see how terrible I am at life without you, or using it as an excuse for you to keep visiting, holding me close, and texting to ask if I am fine? I wonder if my compulsion to check my phone, to scroll endlessly through social media, is any different from my addiction to you.

I read that earthquakes occur due to tectonic plate movements, volcanic activity, or human actions. I'm convinced the reason the hole in my chest feels like an earthquake is due to the last part! Is it your words, your reassurances, your gaze, and the possibility that I might never experience this again that's creating this hole? No matter how much I try to forget you, I always fail.

Why do I have such audacity to think of you like I have a monopoly over you, over your life, and when you choose to leave me? Who made me the accountant of your heart? Am I losing sleep because I love you, or is this just a familiar feeling from seeing the man who had intercourse with my mum and bore me, of how we waited for our turn to see him, begged for him to stay, and how I am still stuck on the stories she tells whenever the waiting starts—her loud whimpers and lies of "it's too much AC" causing the catarrh, and how she died lonely and alone. Truly, grief has no language, and it's unfair that death is the final form of ghosting, a paradox that can't be undone.

I spent 4 hours at the petrol station today. I am amused that even though a liter costs 750 and I cannot afford to fill my tank, I was still there, waiting. It's a wasted effort, just like how I keep tapping my phone. Maybe if it doesn't die, you will call, text, send an email, or apologize and give me a valid reason why you conveniently leave me when you can. Such a wasted effort, like the one you put into making me love you, knowing that you will leave anytime. Wasted efforts like me writing, editing, and looking between the lines of this work, knowing fully well I will never send it to you.