What deep ghosting is like

This is kind of related to NoFap, I hope they allow it because a lot of people lately either can relate or are contemplating going into ghost mode. The pandemic has made many people less social, or at least for a season.

Ghost mode is when you attempt to dial socializing, relationships and communications down to zero.

A lot of how I went to ghost mode happened for me, not all of it was voluntary.

I come from a small family. There weren't many of us to begin with, and since I'm nearing 50, there's a lot fewer.

I used to be married but we never had children. She had an affair, so I left. I could see it coming a mile away. She fell in love with the young guy at the office.

My friends were always scattershot. I never was hugely social, I tended to make just a few friendships that were deeper. But when you leave hs, they drift off. It's the same if you know them from college, a neighborhood, a club, or a job.

Also, I moved away from my hometown to be with my wife. Almost 15 years went by until I moved back after the divorce.

Eventually I ended up in a new city, and even the contacts I made here got whittled down.

Then when the corona virus hit, there was nothing open for a while there.

I found myself unable to talk to anybody for extended periods.

At first, there's all the suffering of it. The lonely days and nights seem to go on forever. Nothing seemed worthwhile. I was flatlined, depressed and unmotivated.

After a while, I started to adjust to it. I was pretty lonely into 2019, but I prayed for it to end. I made a deal with God, which was if He'd take away the loneliness, I'd do a reboot, hard mode. We both made good on it. For my part I did 233 days.

During that long reboot, I stopped seeing the situation so negatively. I would go home at night, and instead of all the sad feelings, which often made me contemplate ending it, I was at peace with it.

I began to look at the time as a blessing. Nobody interfered if I wanted to read longer, work on music more, watch a deep dive video about a subject. Nobody was there to tell me I was a jerk anymore. I didn't have to BE anything, I was just me.

In the case of BEING, it is probably not a thing to other people. For me it was massive. I started to accept the fact that I had certain problems, defects or issues and I couldn't overcome them. Or I could, but I'd revert back to square one immediately.
Why not just BE, and drop the act? It was liberating.

It's one thing to be yourself around people and get validated for it. The problem is that people usually only validate another person because of their own needs or weird perceptions. The opinions of other people just aren't a good indicator of who I was.

But it's another thing to be alone and decide that. The difference is that "I" decided that, nobody influenced that, which makes it genuine. It's bizarre that I even had to be separated from people to realize that I could accept myself. I couldn't do it around other people because I was either appeasing them or trying to promote my own agenda, which was based around my selfish ego.

So I did all this really heavy inner work on myself. I was willing to sit down and journal, also I got a lot of stuff from therapy, and AA.

I just don't think that kind of work is possible around other people. The Shaolin monks believe that others distort your thinking. When you spend most of your time alone, you really see it. I'd have one interaction to chew on for a long time, and it had an echo like the Alps. If one person blurred me out, how in the world did I manage at school, at college, at jobs, or anywhere else? It's astounding. I was driving with a blindfold on.

The last thing that has been important about this is that there is a healthy detachment from people. I don't really understand it. I think it's just the fact that I know that I can be alone. Being alone is not suffering, it is not a bad place. I don't go from person to person trying to get my emotional, social or psychological needs met, like a pinball.

I know where my place of healing is, but I hardly need it anymore. There's a feeling of freedom. The world and it's wackos can say and do what they will to me. I can't control that. What they cannot do is dictate who I am or how I feel. I can do what they can't, which is that if I leave them, they don't own me. But if other people leave them, they have a major crisis that they can't solve, and it affects them on a multitude of levels. What's worse than that?

It's one thing to be with people because it's a good experience. It's never good if you "need" people. If you need people, and fear the loneliness, it's a million layers of torture. Because the work on yourself you need to do, you are trying to solve with people who don't understand it, can't help, and when they soon discover your neediness, will abandon you.

That is why I say it is necessary to ghost out, to journal, to work on yourself, and to get to the point where being alone is good. Add to it other good habits like diet, fitness, exercise, intelligent hobbies, and it builds you on the inside.

I had to Lose Myself to Save Myself in the process....heh heh...

 

Yes, I think just being there long enough forces people to adapt.

 

Yes, I meant to mention that in the post.

The first two years were rough because I wouldn't embrace it.

And, you just gave me another idea for a post!