Being Psycho in the Name of Healing

“I don't even want you back, I just want to know if rusting my sparkling summer was the goal and I don't miss what we had, but could someone give a message to the smallest man who ever lived?”

A few months ago I started writing about being ghosted by a tumultuous situationship and healing from it. I never finished what I was writing because at the time there was no real way to end it. I still had not fully healed and a bitter taste remained in my mouth despite years going by. There was so much I wanted to say and so many unresolved feelings that I kept trying to shove down into a box far far away. As more and more time went by I became more and more angry, confused, and annoyed. Angry that I couldn’t get rid of this bitterness. Confused because I thought that “time would heal all wounds”. Annoyed as fuck that an 18-year-old version of myself was still screaming in my mind. Time is a crazy thing. Sometimes things happen and no matter how much time goes by you are still stuck at that moment.

There have been so many times over the years where I have talked to my friends about this guy who ghosted me. I talked to them about nightmares that I had about bumping into this person again, the feelings that I still have towards the situation, and sometimes even the nostalgia of that situationship...relationship?...person?... moment?... summer? Despite talking all of my friends' ears off, I still was stuck. Time passed by, the bitterness remained, and I felt like I was going crazier and crazier. With this continuing to drive me crazy I wrote about it because talking about it out loud somehow made me feel even more psychotic. 

And so one night while wrapped in a blanket I pulled out my laptop and wrote.

Typically, when things end, there is a conclusion of sorts. When you finish school, there is graduation. When you leave a job, you hand in a letter of resignation, and when you go to a restaurant, you get a bill at the end of your meal. The list of things that represent an ending can go on endlessly. Some symbols may seem trivial or “meaningless,” while others may feel freeing, terrifying, daunting, or all of the above. No matter what these symbols mean or however they feel, these conclusions allow us to process the end of something and help us move on to the next thing. 

So what do you do when something ends without explanation? How do you move forward with no natural way to explain or rationalize that something has ended? Imagine a game being played. The game is competitive and there is no clear winner. It’s thrilling to watch, and you honestly don’t care who wins. Suddenly, towards the end of the game, one of the players leaves without a word. The remaining player is left, and no one knows what this means for the game. Is the other person going to return? Does the person left waiting automatically win? An ending like this is inherently bizarre because there are no answers or explanations. Any “win” doesn’t feel like a win at all. 

Much like the game previously described, being ghosted is an ending that simultaneously has no ending. Whoever termed “ghosting” hit the nail on the head because it can feel like you are haunted by a presence that is no longer there. The door of the relationship is never closed and all that's left is a lingering presence and thousands of questions stuck in your head that will never get an answer. Being ghosted feels jarring and honestly traumatic—the questions of what if and why haunt you.

So the million-dollar question is, how do you finally close the door, give yourself an ending, and move on? I wish it were as simple as holy water or burning sage. I don’t have an answer yet but I am hopeful to one day find one and be able to exercise the ghosts in my life and finally close all the doors left open. 

Writing all of that simultaneously helped and hurt me. It was cathartic to describe the feeling of haunting confusion but I also felt so incredibly insane for writing it FOUR YEARS after the fact. One thing I have come to realize is that sometimes time doesn’t heal wounds. Sometimes we need to do things to stitch ourselves up and close up those wounds that time is unable to heal. Yes, it is objectively “psycho” and “crazy” to take actions and steps when so much time has passed. But also, at least for me, there is only so long that I can be stuck in the asylum of my mind before I break. 

So now we fast forward to a few weeks after I wrote all of this when Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets Department. Track 14 on the album is titled “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and damn did that song mess me up. It perfectly encapsulated all of my confusion, pain, and anger that I have tried desperately to box away. Finally, after a week of having that song on repeat, I broke and had my “psychotic” break. At 1 am on a Friday, I texted my ghost a Spotify link to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”. I woke up to a response he sent. I smiled, laughed, and proceeded to leave him on read. I felt all of my wounds close and finally felt at peace with the situation. 

Call me crazy, psycho, or insane, I don’t care. I stand by what I did. For so much of my life, I have ignored my feelings out of respect and courtesy to others. I never wanted to take up space or be loud. I never wanted to inconvenience other people with my issues with how they treated me. I have continually let time run and bitterness linger. There is no “right” way to move on from something and confronting pain is never easy or straightforward. Texting this person was me finally accepting and making space for my feelings to be acknowledged and heard by the people who caused them. With all that said there is only one thing left to say…  

Good Fucking Riddance.