please stop playing in my head

please stop seeming true. 

tapes - alanis morissette

for those who are left behind

it's strange how the journey to a painful realization can be almost as painful as the the realization itself. i had an online "conversation" with sean this past weekend that firmly established (finally some might say) in my mind that our friendship is at an end or perhaps i should phrase it this way. any substantive engagement in the friendship on his part has ended (though one might question, if there's only one person present, does that a friendship make?).

i'd write more about what transpired, but at this point, does it really matter? i will share that within the conversation i was attempting to get some acknowledgment from him of the concerns i had about the growing distance between us and the hurt that it has caused me. while i recognized that he would likely state that there was nothing he could do to ease the pain, i wanted to know that at least i had been heard. that acknowledgment never came even after i explicitly asked him to comment on what i had been sharing over the past few months.

my therapist says that there is a particular psychological character trait that manifests in certain people of being able to completely engage and then disengage from a relationship at the flip of a switch. one moment they can be all in and the next they can be gone with no trace to be found. it's the underlying trait to the phenomenon called "ghosting." this was his speculation for what i was experiencing as i shared my confusion of how sean could be so fully present for one period of our friendship and so completely absent for another - an absence that manifests even when we are in direct contact with one another.

the emotional pain i'm experiencing does not have its origins in this specific situation. it traces back to my absentee father, who ghosted from my life just prior to when i was born, and has been nurtured by similar situations where friendships just ended without really any explanation as to why the other individual disappeared. it's difficult to experience this phenomenon once in one's life. repeat performances can definitely take a toll on one's sense of worth to others as it has with me.

from the explanation by my therapist that this type of relationship dynamic is well-documented in the annals of psychology, i recognize that what i've experienced is not unique to me. it is just a fact that certain people are able to remove themselves from friendships without a goodbye or an explanation or a even a glance backwards. i just wonder, for those of us who are left behind, for me who has been left behind, how do we stop the pain from reverberating throughout the remainder of our lives, affecting any future relationships that we might become brave enough to enter?

i will do my best to bind up my wounds and yet i have little confidence at the moment that complete healing is possible. i feel there will continue to be a remnant of the pain of this experience embedded deep in my heart, joining the others that already reside there.