The Friend Who Disappeared Like a Ghost

There were some nights when we texted and chatted until 3 a.m., lamenting our feelings of hopelessness and pain. We were both in tough situations, sorting out who we were in our early 20s and knowing the other person would pass zero judgment on us and keep everything confidential. I helped her out through some hard times and situations, and she helped me out through my hard situations. I felt like she was someone you could talk to about anything.

She was a really good friend. Although we fell out of touch from time to time, we could always count on each other in times of need. Whenever we had time off from school, we tried to link up with our friend group and hang out. I would like to think we both valued each other’s friendships and listening ears, and obviously, our friend groups intersected, so whenever we were all in the same place, we would meet up and hang out.

I invited her to my wedding, and she didn’t respond when I sent a reminder. She RSVP’d that she would come, so I assumed she saw the invitation to be able to RSVP. On the actual day, she didn’t show, which stung based on the financial expenditures it cost to have each person there, and I did get a little resentful. I texted to see if she was alright, and didn’t receive a response.

But some of the other people in our friend group said they weren’t surprised. People had contacted her, and no one heard from her in at least a year. I thought it was just me, for a while, and I did realize there were more important things than a wedding being no-showed.

All of us, who counted her as a good and close friend, had not heard from her in a very long time. We didn’t know if she was okay. We didn’t know if she just disconnected all her social media and changed her phone number. We honestly didn’t know if she was still alive.

People ghost you and people fade out of your life as time goes on. That’s part of growing up. You lose contact and have no idea how the other person is doing. Perhaps my friend is just setting boundaries and limiting her circle to her closest friends, and we just didn’t make the cut. I think our whole friend group has to come to grips with the reality that maybe we perceived our connection as closer than perhaps she did.

Perhaps it’s just a detox of social media and text. People do that. Sometimes, I do that — for a couple of hours. But it takes a lot of courage to set those boundaries and prioritize your own well-being and mental health.

It was no secret that our friend struggled with depression, and occasionally with suicidal ideation. We did our best to help, and I tried to provide a listening ear, while others may have tried to link her with resources. Alas, I don’t know how helpful we really were, but we all tried because we cared.

There’s a part of me that wonders whether I, or whether any of us in the friend group did something wrong. It wasn’t all cordial all the time. We called each other out in certain differences of opinion, not publicly but we were comfortable enough to say how much we disagreed with each others’ choices when they adversely affected one another. There are times when I’m not the best with boundaries, which has always been the case, so I regret I don’t see that I wasn’t more mature or able to let grudges go at times.

But we’d been friends long enough that we always made up, and it seemed like we would all be lifelong friends because we had gone through a lot of personal challenges and came out still close friends on the other side.

The fact is, at this point in our lives, I don’t know what’s going on in her life, and she doesn’t know what’s going on in mine (largely).

But this is, unfortunately, how real life goes. Good friends fall out of touch and disappear from each other’s lives for seemingly no reason, no big fallout, and nothing that would seem like it warrants any Hollywood movie material.

It’s not the first time I’ve had friends fall out of my life and out of touch, due to very normal life events like moving, going to college, starting a family, or starting another job. Often, life goes on, people get busy, and unfortunately, a lot of people won’t stay in touch unless they need something. At times, I’m sure I’ve been that person, and having that kind of transactional expectation can feel slimy and wrong.

But it’s the first time, for me, someone I was close with seems to just have disappeared off the face of the Earth. Obviously, it’s jarring enough for me to write publicly about it, and it’s jarring the first time it happens to anyone.

I can speculate all sorts of reasons why, but I do feel like everyone goes through an experience where they’re the person who disappears, or they have people who disappear in their lives.

The only thing we can do is wish they’re well and be receptive if they ever try to get back in touch.

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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.

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