To Be "Ghosted"

Millennials call it "ghosting," but back in my days, we just called it being ignored for some allotted amount of time that we could never comprehend.

"I hate being ignored," my friend Rosa told me once. It's a truism for all women. We hate it. We like talking, we like to think that talking helps, we talk to bond, we talk to alienate other people, we talk because someone, somewhere down the line, fathers of psychotherapy, taught us that talking helps. Talking heals. If you can't solve a problem, talk about it. Eventually, under some proverbial rock, we will talk ourselves into some solution.

Elijah is quite the talker, or he was. He would send me random txt-messages that said nothing except a detail of his day. He would leave me five to 10 (sometimes more) txt-messages on my phone for me when I woke up. Most of these messages, I didn't understand, but I like the idea that when someone can't sleep, he/she immediately thinks of me and wants to talk to me.  Elijah isn't much of a sleeper. He is often await until past three am. He knows that after about nine pm, I'm drowsy from my meds, and, as he once told me, slurring my words.

He has a mean streak that reminds me of my mother. What he has over my mother is the fact that usually by the night, he has insight into his own behavior, and more or less apologizes.

Some things he just doesn't quite understand, a quality I blame on his youth (he's 23). When he sped away from the ranch gate that day, driving drunk, the women working the gate were so startled that they called the cops. I tried to explain to him that he scared me too, that I could see him in an accident, and he dismissed my concerns callously. Of course, Morpheus never learned the lesson of not to drive drunk, he's still doing it in his forties.

Biologically, younger people take more risks because their brains aren't fully formed yet.

I tried as best I could to get Elijah to pull over and let me drive (I asked if I could drive as we were leaving the restaurant), and he ignored my concerns. If Elijah would have crashed in those hills between the ranch gate and town, I would have forever blamed myself.

Being "ghosted," it's hard for me to comprehend why. He doesn't like opioids, so perhaps in turn he decided that he doesn't like me.

I've considered the option that he's just depressed over something (or perhaps over nothing) and doesn't want to talk. I've ignored my friends for months at a time when depressed, and I suppose it's possible for the same to happen to someone else. Maybe a taste of my own medicine.