space is overrated‼️ 🚀🪐
it's now been 5 days of giving you space. that's what everyone told me to do, anyway. because you ghosted me, and although you added us (angie & i) back, doing anything else would push you farther away. but you know what? i don't like that approach anymore. amongst many other (failed) coping mechanisms, i've been looking up what to do when you've been ghosted by your person. how to cope with the heart shattering pain of it all, because i was sick & tired of crying my eyes out. while not bad advice by any means, and arguably the correct approach in most cases – most pieces of advice discussed taking action towards reclaiming feelings of empowerment & self-worth. that is, to “thank the universe this person showed their true colours and exited your life in a cowardly fashion. now you can move on and be a girlboss!” except no, i can't do that right now. that was my thought for every single piece of “empowerment” advice i read along the way. i can't let go of josh right now.
with that being said, my hypothesis with the next steps will be as follows:
until i've exhausted every effort to restore our friendship, our friendship still has a chance to be saved.
actually, according to chatGPT, a hypothesis needs to be framed in a more “scientific way”. 🙄 i guess a business student like me wouldn't understand. so here's a “real” hypothesis:
if i actively communicate with josh to address any misunderstandings and demonstrate my commitment to repairing our friendship through sincere apologies and efforts to rebuild trust, then there is a higher likelihood that our friendship will be successfully restored.
so as stated in both hypotheses, i really do believe that i have an effort to save this friendship by putting in more effort. here's the plan i had in mind for the approach i would take when messaging you for the first time on the 20th:
◇ start off by saying “hi. while everyone wanted me to give you space, I need to approach this the Irene way. 5 days of giving you space was 5 days I wasted not winning you back.” ◇ apologize for taking him for granted + thanking him for everything he’s done for me + assure him moving forward im going to respect his boundaries, be more grateful and ask him to play things he dislikes less(?) ◇ bring up how there’s so much left for us to do: bd pt2, sons, eventual civ multiplayer sesh, me to finish gantz ◇ express how im going to do my best to win you back. that i still want you in my life & that im going to continue sharing updates about what’s been going on with me – because i want you to know about my life and hopefully still be in it. ◇ share: therapy, Kenny, attempting to make friends on Bumble BFF, going to try a new pork belly recipe, the new playlist, the blog ◇ “we can talk about the serious stuff later. for now this is what i wanted to share and even if you say nothing back to me – I’ll be back tomorrow with more updates.” ◇ “good luck getting rid of me. I wasted 5 days waiting around and that stops now. you’re too important for me to give up on, so until I’ve done everything I possibly can, I’m fighting to keep you in my life.”
contrastingly, i do not believe that waiting around for 5 days was the right approach, even if there was a possibility you just needed more time. i always told myself that if i just sit back & wait around for things, they won't come to me. why would this be any different? with this plan in motion, there's no doubt about it, i'm ready to get hurt again. i don't know if this is going to be the right approach, or if it'll even work, but this beats sitting back + crying every single night – wondering if/when you're coming back.
until i've exhausted every effort possible, i'm not letting you go out of my life yet.
as for you doing me dirty by ghosting me, or me doing you dirty by potentially taking you for granted – there's probably a thousand possibilities as to why this all happened in the first place. you probably know more of them than i do. but the blame game/serious talk can happen later. for now, i have a best friend to try and win back.