The Wretched Life of the Man Who Lives with Ghosts

October 27, 2022

I broke up with my first girlfriend on September 8th, 2015. I was twenty years old.

Two weeks before I broke up with her, I flew across the world to start a new life. I didn't know where she was going to fit in this new life. I had barely known where she fit in the old life — the one I was running away from. I figured that everything would just work itself out, or it wouldn't.

A week before we broke up, she broke her glasses. She broke them in the evening, which was for me the middle of the day. She sent me a picture of the broken pair of glasses, with the text, "I broke my glasses." She went on: "I'm so upset. I think I'm going to cry."

I saw this text when I arrived back in my room in the evening, my time, which was the middle of the night, her time. I had spent the day out with some new friends. We had gone somewhere and learned nothing, and come back exhausted. I opened my phone. I saw her message. I saw the picture of a pair of broken glasses on a floor 7500km away. I thought, "There's nothing I can do about that."

Three days later, I had to attend an introductory party for the exchange students at my school. I was one of ten. We had to stand in front of a large group of students and faculty and introduce ourselves in Japanese. I used a grammatical structure I had never used before. I had just heard one of the other exchange students, a guy who was a few years older and wiser than me, use this grammatical structure, and I thought it sounded cool. Afterwards, we ate potato chips and cupcakes and drank tea. We stood around with the Japanese students in groups of three or four. They wanted to talk to us in English, and we were all too happy to oblige. Some of us had been in Japan now for ten days, and were already burned out from spending half of our brain just trying to read signs or decipher what store clerks were saying to us. (It turns out, they mostly wanted to know if we needed a bag.)

We stood there in our awkward circles for something like an hour. I can't remember what we had done earlier that day, but it was something equally tedious and social. We, the ten exchange students living together in our dorm building, had just got to know each other, and already we were having to use each other as support while we met even more new people. We had not yet developed a new normal; every day, we did something new, and faced some new barrier we hadn't before known was going to exist. We were tired.

After the party, I went to my bedroom. I turned off all of the lights, closed the curtains, and hid under the covers. It was around dinnertime where I was. It was the middle of the night, where she was. I messaged her, hoping she might be awake. I told her that I was absolutely drained. I told her that I was lonely and tired and that I was starting to wonder whether any of this had been a good idea. She didn’t respond. She wasn't awake. I sat there by myself. I stared at the ceiling for three hours. Hours later, I emerged to find some food. Before I left my room, I checked my phone again. She still hadn't woken up. In her world, it was three in the morning.

Four days later, we broke up. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but I remember that at one point she asked, "Are we breaking up?" and I said, "Yeah, I think so." She started crying. I didn't cry. In my mind, all I could think about was that I was looking at a computer screen. At the time, my now ex-girlfriend existed in cyberspace. I didn't think of the TV show Reboot at the time, but I'm thinking about it now.

After our conversation was over, I closed my computer. I stepped outside into the common area of my dorm room. My roommate was in his bedroom with the door open. He was reading a manga on his computer. I sat down at the kitchen table. "I just broke up with my girlfriend," I said.

"Shit, dude. I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay," I said. "It doesn't really feel real."

We talked for a little while about girlfriends and about breakups. I thought about the two other times I had broken up with this same girlfriend. Both times, I had felt like I had no one to talk to. No one I knew had ever broken up with anyone, or at least, not with anyone they'd dated for any significant period of time. One of my friends had dated a girl when they were both in seventh grade, and he had broken up with her over e-mail after not talking to her for three weeks. They had gone on a single date. He told me that story once, after I had broken up with my girlfriend the first or second time. It didn't make me feel much better.

My new roommate had broken up with someone before. He had done it a shocking number of times. This wasn't his fault; sometimes these things just don't work out.

For three weeks, I didn't feel anything. I was too absorbed in my new world, with its new characters, new locations, and new complications. With all this newness, I was constantly surprised by the fact that I always remained the same. I grew exhausted and despondent after extended social situations. I worried about what people thought of me. I was never sure, even when I was smiling and laughing, whether I was truly happy.

I had a crush on someone. I had a crush on probably seven people at the same time, but I had a particular crush on one person. I had developed this crush a week before I broke up with my girlfriend. I liked her a lot better than I liked my girlfriend. I knew nothing about her, really, except what she looked like and the way she talked. I decided in my head that she didn't have any of the problems that my girlfriend had. I decided that she never had any problems at all, and therefore would have the time and energy to solve all of mine for me.

I was twenty years old.

Three weeks after I broke up with my first girlfriend, I woke up to find a message from her. She told me that the tickets for the flight she had booked to come see me in Japan were non-refundable, so she was coming anyway. She was going to stay in Tokyo, and she did not want to see me. Then she told me that she was seeing someone new. She said that she thought it would be best for me to hear it from her first. She said that she didn't plan for it to happen so soon but "shit happens I guess."

I put my phone down on the ground. In my head, I screamed, "I don't care!!!!" with a lot more exclamation marks than I just wrote down. I picked the phone up off the ground. I put the phone back down again. I picked the phone up again. I told her to have a good trip, and that I never wanted to get back together with her, and that I wished her and her new boyfriend all the best. Looking back and appreciating the sandwich-like nature of that message, I realize that it definitely made her angry, and that I kind of wanted it to, because her message had made me angry, and I could tell that she had kind of wanted it to.

The next time I was on my computer, Facebook accosted me with a giant picture of her new boyfriend kissing her on the cheek. I closed the page. I realized that I cared. I cared in a complicated and stupid way that would stick with me for almost three years. I cared because I was twenty years old and this sort of thing hadn't happened to me before.

In my head, someone had to be the bad guy, and over time it became clear that it was me. It was quite obvious that I had moved across the country like a coward before breaking up with her via negligence. I had to wait for her to ask me whether we were breaking up, even though I knew when I started the call that that's exactly what we were going to do. I had broken up with her twice before, and both times got back together with her because I was too scared to move on. If anyone was at fault, it was certainly me.

I was the center of the universe. I was the smartest person in the world; the person with the most developed and intricate feelings; the person with the most interesting ideas — in short, the kind of person that anyone would want to be with. I wanted her to remember me, and remember me as a nice and kind and smart and funny and caring boyfriend.

The problem was that I was not always a nice, kind, smart, funny and caring boyfriend. I was often a total piece of shit. Sometimes, I didn't care about her problems, and I just went through the motions. Sometimes, I kind of wished I could just be alone. We didn't always see eye-to-eye, and it often felt like we were waiting for the other to change into the person we wanted them to be.

I didn't want her to remember all those bits. I didn't like to imagine her with her new boyfriend, talking about how she just realized that I was not a particularly fun or enjoyable person to date, and that she was much better without me. I knew I was better off without her, but I didn't want her to know that the same was true for her.

In my head, someone had to be the victim, and over time it became clear that it was me. This process of reversal happened gradually. It started when I saw the picture of her new boyfriend kissing her on the cheek. At that moment, I felt like I had been punched in the face. The person punching me in the face was myself, but I didn't realize that at the time. I thought someone else had punched me, and I was indignant. "Hey! Who just punched me? What the hell!"

A year later, after many rememberings and forgettings, overthinkings and underthinkings, decisions and indecisions, I knew for a fact that I had been done wrong by the world. I had met an angel, and I had let her slip away between my fingers. I had met the love of my life, and The World had whisked her away from me. What exact role The World had played in all of this was unclear, but at the very least, the Pacific Ocean had certainly been a factor.

I spent two years writing essays in which I meticulously analyzed every aspect of our relationship and multiple break-ups. This definitely did not help. I continued to write these essays long after they stopped doing me any good. I wrote so many of these essays for so long that the only way I could stop myself was to stop writing completely.

With my pantry well-stocked with heartbreak, I lived off my self-pity for a few long and miserable winters. This rotten diet turned me into a great monster of self-pity, a garbage pile of misplaced blame and misremembered slights. I loved her, and then I hated her, and then I loved her again, and then I loved and hated her at the same time. This process lasted almost as long as our relationship had. It turned me into sludge that crawled along the floor. It turned me into vapour that disappeared into the air. It turned me into a shadow and a ghost and a clown.

And then, on the evening of a bright summer day, I realized that I couldn't remember anymore why I felt this way. I no longer had any feelings left to feel about her, or our relationship. My pantry was empty; it had been empty now for months, and I had been living off the dust that had collected in the corners.

I emerged from my cave-swamp to find something to eat. And I thought, this time, I should get myself something nice. I thought, I could eat some confidence right about now. I could chow down on some tiny successes. I could really go to town on a sense of accomplishment.

I had scrounged my self-pity from the dumpster by the ton, but this new diet required a little more time, and a little more forethought. It took a lot longer to re-fill my pantry this second time. Many days, I went hungry.

Years later, I met her at a party. I didn’t want to talk to her. It wasn’t like before, where I didn’t want to talk to her because my feelings were too confused and frightening. Now, I didn’t want to talk to her because I thought it would be boring. She talked to me anyway. She told me that I was the second-best boyfriend she had ever had, aside from her current one. I said, “Thanks.” She wanted to talk to me about my new girlfriend. I wanted to talk to someone else. I used the soonest distraction to wander off and find a friend. She found me again. She tried to talk to me about my new girlfriend again.

Someone took a picture of us during this conversation. I was wearing a red Venetian mask from the dollar store. I think I had found it on the floor somewhere. It was Halloween. I was slouched on a stool in front of a window, holding a solo cup over my lap with both hands. My posture and facial expression is that of a miserable and wretched man. I was thinking, “Man, I’ve had this conversation in my head 18 000 times over the course of two years, and now, just as I thought I was done with it, I have to have it in real life.” I realized that if I had actually met and talked to her over the course of those years, I would have got over her a lot more quickly. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

Of course, none of this was ever about her. As soon as I boarded that plane to Japan, she ceased to exist in my life as an actual person. That may sound rude or callous, but it’s true. It wasn’t just her; when I boarded that plane, I left my friends behind, my family behind, my parents behind. For those six months, they existed as nothing but symbols of home. They existed as ghosts of a world gone by. Of course, when I returned, they entered my life again as if they had never left. But she did not. She remained a ghost.

I lived with that ghost like I was married to it. I lived with it at work, at home, and in my dreams. The ghost was present in everything I did. When I thought of love, I thought of the ghost. When I thought of memory, I thought of the ghost. When I thought of companionship, I thought of the ghost. When I thought of my future, the ghost stood resolutely in the way.

It was not long before the ghost ceased in any way to resemble the person who had preceded it. It took on many forms, and it wore many hats. It only wore her face when it needed to; at other times, it was satisfied being but a little itch in the back of my mind.

The figures that exist in our head are not people, but ghosts. Even the people you see every day: when you think of them, you are thinking of a ghost you invented from a shadow. If you’re not careful, you can pile onto this ghost all manner of personal insecurities and fears. You can make a nemesis of a friend, by pretending that they see you exactly as you see yourself in your worst moments. You can make an angel or a devil out of someone you’ve wronged: whichever fits your psychological response to guilt.

You can play around with these ghosts like a child with toys, casting them in absurd scenarios that you relive throughout the day. You can turn them into your conscience. You can turn them into your peanut gallery. You can turn them into your loyal fanbase. But what you do with them is, in the end, nothing but a game you play with yourself. It is disconnected, closed off from social reality.

If you get too caught up in your games, you will often be surprised when you emerge into the world. You may find that people whose ghosts hate you don’t actually bear you any ill-will. You may find that the people whose ghosts talk about you behind your back don’t really think about you much at all. You may find the real person far more interesting and engaging than their ghost, or you may find the opposite. You may find that they have a much different relationship with the ghost of you that exists in their mind, than you have with the ghost of them that exists in yours.

There’s no greater misery than being married to a ghost. There’s no greater loneliness than living in a world of ghosts, chasing them in endless circles, engaging them in abstract arguments that only ever seem to float away into nothingness as soon as they get interesting. The world of ghosts is a stagnant discordant abyss; it is a little lonely Hell. You may think you’re free from the pain and confusion of the real social world and its real, complicated, human individuals, but the ghosts are even worse. They are fickle, changing their hat and their attitude at a moment’s notice. They are boring, never telling you anything you didn’t already know. They’re not funny, and they’ll never surprise you with an act of kindness. And they will never, ever, love you.