Member-only story
Just Another Tale of Woe in the Realm of Ghosting
He was gone before I knew it.
By the third week, I knew I was never going to hear from him again.
It was November 2016. I was down in Disney World, and one day at the parks I refreshed my email app to find a new message waiting in my inbox.
Busy with vacation comings and goings, I just gave the email a quick scan. I figured I could just answer it later, no problem, since it was from an online friend who was often too busy to give a quick reply to anything.
I shut off my phone and continued to bask in the joy of being away from school and work for a week, all while celebrating my love of Disney.
It was supposed to be a good week. Living it, I felt it was a good week.
Only on the plane ride home did I give a second thought to the email sitting in my inbox. The message ended with “take care” — which I found odd, since he had never ended an email that way before.
Something niggled at my brain. I didn’t question it but sat with a sense of unease.
I didn’t think I’d just lost a friend.
Our story began all the way back in 2005. I was a lonely teenager looking for some sense of absolution through words on a message board I’d found online. He told…
