I’m Not Ghosting You. I’m Dissociating With Style.

You think I’m ignoring you. That I read your message and just shrugged it into the void. But I didn’t ghost you.

I simply opened the message, absorbed the emotional weight of your ellipses, drafted five possible replies with varying degrees of vulnerability… and then quietly evaporated into my own brain like a genderless fog machine.

It’s not personal.
It’s neurochemical self-preservation with a touch of “mystique”.

I didn’t disappear because I don’t care.
I disappeared because I care so much that my system rebooted like a heat-shocked MacBook in a philosophy class.

Let me paint the scene:
You sent: “Hey, you around this week?”
I read it.
I felt joy. Then dread. Then joy again.
Then I opened Notes and drafted a reply that began with “Of course! I’ve missed your energy.”
I got overwhelmed by the phrase “your energy,” deleted it, and replaced it with “I exist in fragments this week, but let’s sync soon?”
Then I thought: Is that too much?
Then I opened TikTok for 9 hours and woke up in a different decade.

That’s not ghosting.
That’s spiritual buffering.

And it’s not just you.
I’m ghosting everyone.
My group chats. My dentist. My own sense of momentum.

Modern communication feels like a permanent pop quiz I forgot to study for but still want an “A” in.
It’s a full-time job translating my inner world into digestible texts that don’t trigger concern or cancellation.

And don’t even get me started on voice memos.
Nothing like hearing my own voice say, “No worries at all!” while my soul leaks out of my pores.

So please…
Don’t take the delay personally.
I will respond. Eventually. At 2:37 AM on a Tuesday with a message that says “Sorry! Things have been nonlinear.”

It’s not that I don’t love you.
It’s that I haven’t loved myself enough this week to form a coherent sentence.

But I’m working on it.
One unfinished draft, one ignored notification, one perfectly curated vibe at a time.