Cancelling, ghosting and our collective loneliness

Why we have never felt more alone than now. Featuring fellow substacker Ariadne Solis.

Cancelling has become commonplace, something that has been collectively accepted as a kind of social code. Make plans with someone, only to cancel on them later repeatedly. Message them with the intention of going for coffee, only to back out last minute, lamenting the lack of the time and other pressing priorities.

I get it, people have limited schedules and most people have good intentions to carve out whatever time they feel that they may have. However, many of them are just empty promises, made on a whim without much thought.

As an epidemic of loneliness continues to loom over us, the reality of someone cancelling on you repeatedly, has dredged up more sadness than I thought possible. Stolen cries in quiet corners, buried bitterness, broken trust, bewilderment all bottled up. This same bottle buckling under the pressure of having no space to release. Nothing to pour into and even out the weight.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

It's like an involuntary solitary confinement, in a world that operates like a social lottery. You are second guessing as to whether this time you might have a stroke of luck, forging something along the lines of fellowship with someone.

I recently had an acquaintance who offered to go for coffee and I could feel the jolt of shock and also real appreciation for wanting to meet. After a few brief messages, we agreed on a date and a place, which followed a request to re-arrange to a different day and then ultimately cancel that very day, due to being ‘too busy.’

What later ensued was a hollow statement that ‘we will catch up’ when she’s ‘back.’

I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that no follow-through continued, but it left me feeling empty. Even my own godmother continues to follow the same pattern.

We live in a world of people who have become accustomed to no longer breaking bread with one other, but rather collecting breadcrumbs. For those who are hungry for warmth, meaningful connection, follow-through and just some indication that they are acknowledged, it can leave you feeling starved.

Photo by Geoffroy Hauwen on Unsplash

Starved of sisterhood, companionship, community. Ghosting is yet another experience that feeds into this, that continues to erode a person’s self-worth and social capacity. Leaving them at a loss as to how to continue pouring from their cup that is perpetually dry. Attempting to water others with nourishing affirmations, when they themselves are parched.

One of my fellow substackers Ariadne Solis, a beautiful writer and poet captures the full gravity of ghosting, in her post: Ghosting and the Pain of Silence.

An experience that has become so ordinary, it is now simply rationalized and has permeated the very foundations of human connection.

What I admire about this particular post by Ariadne is how she conveys the confusion between feeling unseen and dangling on the periphery of someone’s mind. It’s a limbo state that many of us have become accustomed to experiencing.

They said they would respond.
They said they would share their thoughts.
Or maybe they said nothing at all—
but you expected a response.

Time passes. The message never comes.

Silence is heavy. It presses down, lingers in the space where words should be.

Many of us can find ourselves emotionally numb, devoid of feeling when this happens repeatedly. The weight of being left to stew in silence from a message that never comes. It can feel even heavier when we are emotionally attached or invested in someone, that the prospect of needing to detach, is not dissimilar to the shock after injuring ourselves.

As Ariadne writes the ‘silence is heavy, presses down’ on us and invades the space where words should be. It’s cloying and claustrophobic.

It is about every time we reached for love and found air.
Every time we swallowed our truth to be more acceptable.
Every time we apologized for taking up space.
Every time we believed that shrinking ourselves would finally make them stay.

The lengths that we have to go to, under the illusion that we have to compensate and masquerade as someone else. The lines around the concept of ‘space’, ‘apologizing for it’ and needing to ‘shrink’ induce such realism around the true shame and despondency we can feel.

The very arrangement of Ariadne’s words paint this familiar portrait of self-correction that strangles us. Self-deception that encroaches on what is truth, versus the lies we are led to believe.

Every time we were taught that being:
too much,
too needy,
too raw,
too honest,
would drive love away.

And so, we were taught to chase what retreats.

In our messy, vulnerable human state we chase what we can never quite reach in others. What I find so effective around ‘chasing what retreats’, is it reminds me of the shoreline. Waves recede and retreat from our grasp, yet they come back again.

Playing with possibility, yet ultimately leaving us with a sinking feeling of failure, as they are always just out of reach. Clutching grains of sand that falls through our fingers, as falsities around being ‘too much’ and ‘too needy’ slip in and out of our minds.

We are never able to fully embrace the fact that our vulnerabilities, our sore, tender, exposed facets of self, form who we are. They are the antidote to a world that has become numb, devoid of feeling from being overly medicated, to the extent that many people remain unresponsive, in a kind of continual coma.

Ariadne continues….

I release you.

I will not wait in the doorway of your silence anymore.
I will not keep knocking on a door that was never meant to open.
I will not carve my worth from the scraps of your inconsistency.

I deserve wholeness, not hunger.
I deserve love, not longing.
I deserve peace, not the scattered pieces of someone who was never fully here.

So, I leave you in your silence.

As Ariadne reminds us, we need to be the closure, rather than fretfully trying to find this closure. We need to release them, because only then can we invite peace. We cannot continue on a diet of scraps and crumbs from others, in a bid to feel worthy. We need proper nourishment, the kind that only time, effort and presence can give.

Someone who can only offer a scattering of intermittent, momentary hits of dopamine is best being left in their silence. Ariadne’s words are a reminder that you ‘deserve love’ and you also ‘deserve peace.’ Her words prick at the seams of human longing, inviting us to write our own declaration of self-worth.

And I walk into my freedom.

No more waiting at the door.

Because I have torn it from its hinges.

I have stepped forward—
into a life where love does not leave me questioning,
where my worth is not held hostage by someone else’s silence.

I am done waiting to be chosen.

I choose myself.

This powerful passage is my reminder going forward that I do not have to wait to be chosen, it's not something any of us have to earn. As Ariadne says ‘I choose myself’, affirming that we can choose to protect our peace and our pearls of wisdom that we carry inside.

You are not alone on this path, there are many more of us grappling with ghosting and loneliness. We are carving out a new way.

If this resonated with you, please do share below your thoughts and also make sure you check out/subscribe to Ariadne’s substack linked here.

A beautiful storyteller with a heart of gold, sharing healing, self-discovery, courage and living authentically.

With Love

Georgie x