I stumbled onto some old texts with my ex, one from a relationship that ended with him ghosting me with no explanation. We were in a long distance relationship and one day, he just said we’re done. He never responded to my messages ever again.
Coming across the messages was like slashing open old scars. This was over 6 years ago, but the shame came back instantly. A hole in my heart opened, and I felt the insecurities wash over me again — I’m not good enough. No one will ever want me.
It took me a few moments to come back into my body and realize that this feeling wasn’t happening in the present. It was a skip in time, a flashback imprinted into my body. I wanted to both laugh at how dramatic I was and scream at him for breaking my 21-year-old heart.
I immediately reached out to a friend. She messaged back — Delete him and the texts.
I thought about it for a bit, but I didn’t. After all, I suppose I’ve done my fair share of ghosting, too. Once, I even ran into one of my victims in the wild.
I was on a bender with a friend one night. We ended up hanging out at the apartment of this guy she was interested in. We were all cozied up on the couch, watching nature documentaries, doing all sorts of degenerate substances. In the middle of it all, his roommate walks out and joins us. We were all pretty blasted at this point when he finally recognized me — or maybe he decided to wait and get high before dropping the bomb on all of us.
“You’re Nancy aren’t you? Do you remember me from [dating app]?”
The truth was I didn’t, but he remembered the very last message I sent him.
“You said you were going to the Metro Boomin show and then you never responded after that.”
Oh. Right.
That was the night my now boyfriend and I officially became a couple, after which I promptly deleted all my dating apps.
Memory’s kind of a funny thing. We remember shame and indignity, but we hardly ever remember causing it. We hang on desperately to what feels true to us, but discard the things that don’t fit with our self-image.
If I force myself to forget, then did it ever really happen at all?
Deleting those texts — and the photos, the momentos, and everything else — would be letting go of the anchor that ties me to reality. My mind would be free to morph history in whichever way it pleased. Tint it all rose-colored. Distort the past and invent whatever stories it wants. I would never be able to tell what’s true.
So, I think I’d rather know for certain. I’d rather have the little fragments, suspended in time. It’s proof that I’m not gaslighting myself — that it really did happen. I went through it, and it’s made me who I am.
That friend and I, we don’t talk anymore. And after thinking back to that night, I scrolled through our past messages. Although it makes me feel sad that we aren’t close anymore, it also comforts me, knowing that our connection was real in that moment.
After reflecting more on this blurb, I remembered a short story I read last year. The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang is a story in his collection Exhalation that explores the fallibility of human memory. It’s a quick and thoughtful read, with lots to noodle on.
The details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities… We rewrite our past to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves…Some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies.
Literacy encourages a culture to place more value on documentation and less on subjective experience… Written records are vulnerable to every kind of error, and their interpretation is subject to change, but at least the words on the page remain fixed, and there is real merit to that.