There's this, girl, whom one'll call Mademoiselle, one really don't know about her; at least not that much. She had her own inner circles, and one isn't one of them. She had more friends than one do when in high school, that's for sure; for one don't have the ability to form circles while she does. But high school being high school, we are all in one country, and meeting others aren't as bad as it sounds, traveling by car, calling them out, and everyone's just busy over exams -- but that's basically it.

As we entered university, we went to different places, here and there. One went to the UK, she went to Australia, her group of friends, some stayed back at hometown, while others went to Hong Kong, Canada, UK, etc. Regardless, everyone was splitted here and there. The difference between a rich person, and one guesses her family is relatively rich (???), and a poor person is, you can choose whether you want to fly somewhere else to find your friends. But whether you can does not mean if you want to -- ultimately, you have to first make the decision before you can cross-check whether that option is available to you. Like most traveler, she did travel here and there, bringing her Kodak with her, taking snapshots, trying to remember the instances and memories; but where she travels, and whom she traveled with, it's another question.

Over the last two years, she seems to get more and more, into herself, confined, imprisoned. Social media said that she did traveled to meet her friends, not all, some. A post by the end of last year said how she wished last year was the previous. Did she wished her friends come to visit her, or did she wish to visit them? She has the ability to visit her friends, yet, she seems to not use them to her extent, perhaps imprisoned in her minds. Does she dwell on, keep telling herself that, it's not the time?

Even if you have the money to visit them, people may not have time for you. Does she asked if she could visit them, but they say they won't have time for her? And when more and more of her inner circles replied the same thing, it caused her doom? For one had texted quite a number of friends in the past year, and many of them no longer replied back, ghosted one, and by many one really means, as a percentage of the total number of people one would think of spending pleasant time with. One wasn't sure, is it one's problem (which, one as a pessimist, naturally thinks), or is it they're just too busy with their lives that they seek efficiency and trot out any 'meaningless' communication?

By 'meaningless', one means casual.

Now that she seek friends, and one seek friends too, is it not a good opportunity to reunite? It is, from one's perspective, but not from hers. For one whom're used to not have friends, not staying in a circle, and frequently lose friends, had to keep seeking out for new friends despite already out of college, and despite seeking friends in adulthood is difficult, despite one longed to get outside but kept staying at home and say that, when one get rich enough, one'll travel, and one don't even know when one'll be rich enough to travel, given the poor condition one's in now financially. For her, whom're used to having an inner circle, when her friends gone, it's not easy for her to open up and accept new strangers into her inner circle. Instead, she'll cling to it long, long, and wished they would free up time for her. That's the drawback of getting used to an inner circle, one guess... And if you don't open up to new friends and stick with the old, believe me, one did that before, trying to retain those friends leaving one when one temporarily formed little circles with them, the relationship is doomed -- one could not get out until one get out of it. And it's even worse for someone not trained to get out and look for new.

That's when one texted her; but alas, since last year, she's in one of the list whom ghosted one. She's in a depressed state (one guess, not necessarily true), reminisced of the past, wishing for friends of the past to reunite to recreate the good old times; one wished to connect with her but she don't wish to accept one into even her outer circles. It's rare to have someone inviting you for a ride in the long journey of life; what's worse than declining someone neutral to walk beside? Or, did she not considered one neutral, but negative? (Sorry, one's pessimism there again.) She prefer to get herself doomed, spiraling into the depth of unknown, rather than have someone not already close to her pull her out?

Wishful thinking. If your close friends really can pull you out (provided that you tell him/her enough cues or directly to ask for help, and not let them guess what you need), you would want to pray, be gratitude every morning, that you had such a friend. Most friends are either too busy with pulling themselves out in the moat of everyday life, or they're only there for the happy moments (and... limited sad moments, in some cases, but won't go to such length [1]). That's why we go to psychologist, a paid stranger whom we give our money, our time, our permission, to breach into our inner world and hope they would solve our problem, or at least, guide us to solve our problem. In all cases, stranger are stranger; sometimes, people find reliefs speaking to someone when they traveled on a train or a plane or a bus on a long journey, and by the end of the day, they're relieved, not scared that the stranger would speak to your other friends and gossip about it because you belong to different circles [2].

One could not save her, if she never wants one to save her. Communication cannot breach the barriers she'd set up called ghosting. All she can do, is to save herself.

Or maybe, one had more to learn.

[1] Perhaps 1%; so if you have 100 friends, you'd have one of them who's such person. And 1% of 8 billion people is 80 million people, which is still quite a lot of people. And distribution isn't exact but random: you could have 10 friends and 3 of them met such criteria; or you could have 1000 friends and none of them met such criteria -- perhaps because of the inner criteria of how you pick friends, or just because math (and hence luck) made your life so and so.

[2] That includes even if (s)he's your 'friend of friend', provided you didn't know who's the 'friend' in the middle. Say, A is friend with B, and C is friend with B. A found C on the train, don't know who's C, speak about their journey, and went off their way. They never met again. A might not tell B about the details of the journey, nor C. Say, if any one of them, say, C, speak to B about the journey, B usually don't link it to A, for A is confessing something that presumably B don't know about, so B cannot find any links in his/her memory. B viewed A as a different personality/character as C viewed A, from their difference in experience. Unless you're so unlucky where A and C both told B, and B linked the two 'journey' together, they'll never meet. And of course, other coincidences happen as well, like you saw B and C walking together down the road coming back from the store, but that's another story.

(This story is first published on my personal blog, wabinab.github.io.)

There's this, girl, whom one'll call Mademoiselle, one really don't know about her; at least not that much. She had her own inner circles, and one isn't one of them. She had more friends than one do when in high school, that's for sure; for one don't have the ability to form circles while she does. But high school being high school, we are all in one country, and meeting others aren't as bad as it sounds, traveling by car, calling them out, and everyone's just busy over exams -- but that's basically it.

As we entered university, we went to different places, here and there. One went to the UK, she went to Australia, her group of friends, some stayed back at hometown, while others went to Hong Kong, Canada, UK, etc. Regardless, everyone was splitted here and there. The difference between a rich person, and one guesses her family is relatively rich (???), and a poor person is, you can choose whether you want to fly somewhere else to find your friends. But whether you can does not mean if you want to -- ultimately, you have to first make the decision before you can cross-check whether that option is available to you. Like most traveler, she did travel here and there, bringing her Kodak with her, taking snapshots, trying to remember the instances and memories; but where she travels, and whom she traveled with, it's another question.

Over the last two years, she seems to get more and more, into herself, confined, imprisoned. Social media said that she did traveled to meet her friends, not all, some. A post by the end of last year said how she wished last year was the previous. Did she wished her friends come to visit her, or did she wish to visit them? She has the ability to visit her friends, yet, she seems to not use them to her extent, perhaps imprisoned in her minds. Does she dwell on, keep telling herself that, it's not the time?

Even if you have the money to visit them, people may not have time for you. Does she asked if she could visit them, but they say they won't have time for her? And when more and more of her inner circles replied the same thing, it caused her doom? For one had texted quite a number of friends in the past year, and many of them no longer replied back, ghosted one, and by many one really means, as a percentage of the total number of people one would think of spending pleasant time with. One wasn't sure, is it one's problem (which, one as a pessimist, naturally thinks), or is it they're just too busy with their lives that they seek efficiency and trot out any 'meaningless' communication?

By 'meaningless', one means casual.

Now that she seek friends, and one seek friends too, is it not a good opportunity to reunite? It is, from one's perspective, but not from hers. For one whom're used to not have friends, not staying in a circle, and frequently lose friends, had to keep seeking out for new friends despite already out of college, and despite seeking friends in adulthood is difficult, despite one longed to get outside but kept staying at home and say that, when one get rich enough, one'll travel, and one don't even know when one'll be rich enough to travel, given the poor condition one's in now financially. For her, whom're used to having an inner circle, when her friends gone, it's not easy for her to open up and accept new strangers into her inner circle. Instead, she'll cling to it long, long, and wished they would free up time for her. That's the drawback of getting used to an inner circle, one guess... And if you don't open up to new friends and stick with the old, believe me, one did that before, trying to retain those friends leaving one when one temporarily formed little circles with them, the relationship is doomed -- one could not get out until one get out of it. And it's even worse for someone not trained to get out and look for new.

That's when one texted her; but alas, since last year, she's in one of the list whom ghosted one. She's in a depressed state (one guess, not necessarily true), reminisced of the past, wishing for friends of the past to reunite to recreate the good old times; one wished to connect with her but she don't wish to accept one into even her outer circles. It's rare to have someone inviting you for a ride in the long journey of life; what's worse than declining someone neutral to walk beside? Or, did she not considered one neutral, but negative? (Sorry, one's pessimism there again.) She prefer to get herself doomed, spiraling into the depth of unknown, rather than have someone not already close to her pull her out?

Wishful thinking. If your close friends really can pull you out (provided that you tell him/her enough cues or directly to ask for help, and not let them guess what you need), you would want to pray, be gratitude every morning, that you had such a friend. Most friends are either too busy with pulling themselves out in the moat of everyday life, or they're only there for the happy moments (and... limited sad moments, in some cases, but won't go to such length [1]). That's why we go to psychologist, a paid stranger whom we give our money, our time, our permission, to breach into our inner world and hope they would solve our problem, or at least, guide us to solve our problem. In all cases, stranger are stranger; sometimes, people find reliefs speaking to someone when they traveled on a train or a plane or a bus on a long journey, and by the end of the day, they're relieved, not scared that the stranger would speak to your other friends and gossip about it because you belong to different circles [2].

One could not save her, if she never wants one to save her. Communication cannot breach the barriers she'd set up called ghosting. All she can do, is to save herself.

Or maybe, one had more to learn.

[1] Perhaps 1%; so if you have 100 friends, you'd have one of them who's such person. And 1% of 8 billion people is 80 million people, which is still quite a lot of people. And distribution isn't exact but random: you could have 10 friends and 3 of them met such criteria; or you could have 1000 friends and none of them met such criteria -- perhaps because of the inner criteria of how you pick friends, or just because math (and hence luck) made your life so and so.

[2] That includes even if (s)he's your 'friend of friend', provided you didn't know who's the 'friend' in the middle. Say, A is friend with B, and C is friend with B. A found C on the train, don't know who's C, speak about their journey, and went off their way. They never met again. A might not tell B about the details of the journey, nor C. Say, if any one of them, say, C, speak to B about the journey, B usually don't link it to A, for A is confessing something that presumably B don't know about, so B cannot find any links in his/her memory. B viewed A as a different personality/character as C viewed A, from their difference in experience. Unless you're so unlucky where A and C both told B, and B linked the two 'journey' together, they'll never meet. And of course, other coincidences happen as well, like you saw B and C walking together down the road coming back from the store, but that's another story.

(This story is first published on my personal blog, wabinab.github.io.)