I recently read the book Ghosted by Rosie Walsh. There were a couple times that I wanted to yell at the book – I’m sure we can all relate, right? Any time you’re reading a book, there are points that you want to yell at your main character. In this one, there were more than enough times, so I think the best thing to do here: Walking through the stages of grief after being ghosted.
We’re going to take a deeper look into things that could have been done, but let’s start with this. What is being “ghosted”? Being Ghosted in this term is when you fall for someone, madly in love, and they disappear without a word. That’s exactly what happened to Sarah in this book and it’s the main focus of Rosie Walsh’s debut novel.
Now, we can walk through the stages of grief, but when someone ghosts you, please know this much: You dodged a bullet. They’re a jerk.
Denial:
A lot of the book seemed like Sarah was in denial- we’ve all been there before if you’ve ever been ghosted by someone. “His phone’s broken.” “Her internet just isn’t working.” “Something horrible happened to them!” – Well… Okay, none of these are completely non-plausible answers to what’s happening, but the truth is that they’re probably just not answering the phone. I know it doesn’t feel very good. I know that it sucks.
Anger:
There we go. Let’s get angry. This jerk just spent however long leading you on and getting you to fall in love with them, and then they didn’t even have the guts to tell you that their love had dried up? Or that they just weren’t that into you? How dare they?! That’s just cruel.
Bargaining:
Okay while what they did was cruel… You still miss them. Maybe if you just message the right thing and then tell them this thing that happened to you (also something she did in the book, not going into detail though) then they’ll start talking to you again. You’ve just got to come up with the perfect thing to say to them.
Depression:
This is the stage we’ve unfortunately got to reach but trust me. The next one is so much better. This is the stage where you call up your best friend, you eat that pint of Ben & Jerry’s and watch your favorite movie. You binge watch your favorite TV show, you get those fancy spa products and you take care of yourself, make yourself feel good. Treat yourself. Yeah, you’re sad but you’ve got your best friend there to let you cry on their shoulder and to feel better about everything.
Acceptance:
Finally, you’re at peace. You feel better about what happened and you recognize that it isn’t a fault of yours. It’s a fault of theirs for letting such an amazing person go. You don’t just let an amazing person walk away. They let you walk away, and that’s their loss because you are incredible!
While Sarah in Ghosted may not have gone through these steps going through the stages of grief, in my opinion, is a much better way of handling things. What do you think? Have you ever been ghosted?
