musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Plucking from the memory a rooted sorrow


I had no idea what ‘ghosting’ was until after I had ventured (naïvely) onto a social media platform while I was travelling; I thought that some people might enjoy my admittedly unusual essays about  what I was seeing, on the assumption that an alternate view might be revelatory for those who read about faraway places which they might want to visit someday. My essays about New Zealand, I hoped, might make it intriguing, bucket-listable.

The only thing I knew about ‘ghosting’ though (before I looked it up) was that it probably meant treating somebody as if they weren’t -present, that is. During an in-person conversation with a friend of mine who had been a loyal reader of some of my more recalcitrant essays, she told me that she thought my travelogues were naïve, and hadn’t bothered to read them; she was ghosting my travelogues, she said. So, confused, and with doubt a ghost-fraught tail between my legs, I resorted to a dictionary definition: ghosting, it seemed was ‘The action of ignoring or pretending not to know a person, esp. that of suddenly ceasing to respond to someone on social media, by text message, etc; the action of ending a relationship or association with someone by ceasing all communication.’ 

I suppose my friend wasn’t really ghosting me – just part of me. Still, I was happy that she was only ignoring some of me. We continue to appreciate each other and look forward to our physical personal conversations; we can still enjoy looking at each other and reading our respective body-languages. And anyway, ‘ghosting’ seems so, well, final with a friend.

There have been various iterations of the idea over the years of course -everything from Brutus in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra ghosting Caesar at Philippi (I had to look that one up), or understanding the term as a description of the soul after someone died; maybe even the act of scaring somebody into doing something they didn’t want to do. And then there was the description (probably 1950ies ) of what you saw happen to a television screen when you hadn’t properly adjusted the ‘rabbit ears’ on top of TV cabinet. Oh yes, and of course there was ‘ghost writing’: the hiring of a proper author to write something for you (Some people thought I should do that for my essays… I’ve already ghosted those critics, however).

But enough historical sifting: we now have digital ghosting with which to contend. Fortunately, apart from my initial hopes of getting people to read the occasional poem, or travel adventure I happened to write, my association with social media sites has always reminded me of testing cold and unknown waters with an unclad toe. I have no idea whether I have been ghosted, because I seldom bother to check. I think for it to work, you’d have to let the person you’re ignoring know that they’re being ghosted wouldn’t you? If they didn’t even realize it, why would it matter?

Still, there is something uncanny about ignoring people that I have learned about in my lifetime; I think Marcel Proust summed up one aspect of the early proto-ghosting angst: he felt that telephones (admittedly infantile exemplars of what we now carry in our pockets) were diabolical since they could force his grandmother to be in his ear, even when she chose not to be in the room with him.

Proust was much more imaginative than me, however. Nowadays, speaking to a person on a telephone is nothing compared with, say, texting people who then seem closer than the person in the seat beside me on the bus -even if the stranger is peeking curiously at my screen. After all, my textee is nowhere to be seen (or heard, or felt). My inquisitive seat-mate notwithstanding, we are surrounded by ghosts already.

But as I have already said, I have to wonder whether ghosting only a specific genre of my oeuvres, actually counts as ghosting; I thought the query might be an excuse for an in-person exchange of views -this time with my curious and certainly physically present seat mate. I wondered whether she might be able to adjudicate whether or not you can pick and choose what can count as ghosting when it emanates from the same source.

So, during a particularly invasive and prolonged peek at my screen by the woman sitting beside me, I sent my eyes to perch on her cheek. We were travelling on the #250 bus (the slow one that winds leisurely along Marine Drive giving me time to develop my argument).

“My friend has just threatened to ghost some of my essays -just some of them, however…” I said, adding the ellipses and italics to show I was open to an honest opinion from a stranger. “I mean can you do that: just ghost somethings and not the person…?” I made a mental note to myself not to overuse grammatical devices.

The person beside me, a matronly grey-haired older lady dressed in a long red woolen coat buttoned up to her neck and a black, tasseled toque slowly adjusted her stare to include my eyes. “Excuse me? Were you talking to me?” she asked, as if it puzzled her that I could mix texting and talking at the same time.

I smiled, to diffuse her confusion. “Yes. I was asking who -and what– you think can be legitimately ghosted.”

She still looked confused.

“I’m texting a friend who thinks she can choose which aspect of a person deserves a proper ghosting. Not the person, mind you: just aspects of what that person does… or thinks.” I shook my head slowly, to prove to her that I doubted that it could be done. “I don’t think that counts as ghosting; you can’t pick and choose. I mean there must some all-or-nothing rules; I don’t think ghosting is something you can do lightly, eh?” I sighed and shook my head more vigorously to emphasize my confusion. “What do you think…?” I figured more ellipses would give her some time to consider the problem.

My seat mate stared at me blankly, shrugged and then reached for the cord above her head. “I almost missed my stop,” she explained with a poorly-disguised sigh. And then, no doubt trying to be polite, she stared benignly at my face, like a friendly dog just meeting me for the first time on a trail might. “I have no idea what you’ve been talking about,” she said as she stepped into the aisle and hurried to the door without a  backward glance or a courteous smile when the bus pulled over to the curb.

I had a sinking feeling that I had just been ghosted –all of me this time…

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gozzter

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