On Ostracism

I was probably in a position to write this post as early as six years ago, I would have had around 2 years to percolate/steep in my shame. 

The difficulty of the subject of ostracism is trying to write about your experiences with someone who wants nothing to do with you. It's, in my thinking, a difficult subject to write about.

Involuntarily, I hear the voice of myopic ideaologues lecturing me: 'Don't you get it? You fucked up. They want nothing to do with you so leave them alone.' Which makes me shy away from tackling the topic. 

The thing is, I do get it. That's why I don't have a restraining order out on me. That's why I've never been in any legal trouble. That's why I'm a free man. But ostracism is wrong.

And I'm aware, that pretty much every woman I know has experienced ostracism, and I'll just confess I haven't even searched for the accounts of female voices on this subject. I'll merely concede that I'm probably a tourist in the mother country of women everywhere, and plough on with my accounting.

Is Ostracism Violence?

To the best of my recollection, Sam Harris was the first to outline the following dichotomy - that we only have one alternative to resolving conflicts with violence and that is communication.

Ostracism, or the cold shoulder, or ghosting, or cancelling seems to provide a third option - disengagement. 

There's space for this view in the undefined term 'violence'. I maintain that ostracism is violence, albeit much trickier to understand than kicking or punching, pulling hair, glassing, cutting a bitch etc. Those are straight forward.

I'm aware I live in times where a somewhat popular, if fringe, meme is that 'speech is violence' and 'silence is violence' (the latter if accepted would appear to oblige us to accept that ostracism is violence, however that's not the intent of the meme - to my understanding it implies an obligation to speak up lest you're "complicit" in violence)

The case for these memes, is I feel, weak. Naturally the cases haven't persuaded me. Much weaker than ostracism as violence.

I don't really know where to start making the case, so I'll just assert that it's my understanding that in the animal kingdom among social species (like us) being excluded from the group meant death. Not social death, but literal death. I have no idea when or where in history this ceased to be the case. I feel technology and capitalism and the enlightenment and modernity have made the condition of ostracism survivable, much like acute appendicitis.

Lacking the expertise though, I won't delve any further into that line because it'd just be speculation, though I'm confident ultimately that it's true. That there will be animals for whom shunning is just a low risk, safe and cruel way to kill some transgressor. It's just contemplating how historically consequential the effects of shunning were should raise questions as to how thirteen year old girls treat each other.

It's why I wouldn't be surprised if almost every cis-hetero male in their adolescence didn't have an experience akin to having their shoes stolen by their mates and thrown over the school fence, or having their lunch slapped out of their hand into the dirt, or getting a noogie, or dacked, or pantsed in pool, wet willy, squirrel gripped, wedgie, pushed over another guy that was crouching behind their legs, had their school books 'dicked' when they left them in the common room, or beat up, or piled on, stacks-on, or cup caked, tea bagged, dunked, swirlied...etc. and while picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, looked over and saw some girl in the school yard that had been shunned by the mean girls and thought 'man that's fucked up.'

Without expositing my notions of sex differences, my impression is that most men in male hierarchies do not experience life as under a constant threat of ostracism. Social media, by facilitating social interactions at a physical remove, probably have seen more teenage boys living under the conditions traditionally associated with female homosociality. Again, it's all just speculation on my part. And I've had a good 8 years to speculate.

My next case for ostracism as violence, would be common property. That would require accepting that damage to property is violence and I acknowledge this isn't a universal view. I'm unpersuaded that 'property is theft' or more extremely and further down the rabbit hole 'property is whiteness' and what not. I just want to acknowledge people convinced of this, exist. Having taken such views courteously and far more seriously than anybody should, I've arrived at having no further time to entertain them, so back to the schoolyard. 

If someone broke into your locker and stole your Texas-instruments graphic calculator, a day before SWOTVAC, the damages and suffering would be real. 

That's sufficient for me, the notion that because Pizzaro and Cortes plundered Mexico and Peru that it isn't violence to burn down someone's house, smash up their car with a golf club, slash their paintings or throw out all their clothes is ludicrous. Furthermore if 'property is theft' and or 'property is whiteness' it becomes hard to see what is wrong with the actions of colonial powers like Spain, Britain, Portugal, France and Italy when they came in and took all the indigenous people's property by force and duplicity, which is obviously ludicrous.

Anyway, there's not just shared physical property, which I care about the least but that's because of the low dollar value. There is "common property" in social circles, as in spaces that are/were shared, mutual friends etc. Obviously ostracism or shunning in most contexts doesn't work if the mutual friends don't participate in the shunning. This has never really applied to my experiences with being ostracised though. it's worth noting, even with my lack of insight though because from the outside looking in, who mutual friends side with confers power - literally the power to shun.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere. ~ Coriolanus, Act 3, Scene 3, William Shakespear.

I do not share Coriolanus' contempt for those that banished him. But there is some remedy in that sentiment of stepping into your power and letting fly in equal and opposite direction. Again, from the outside looking in, if there's a group of mean girls, and Brittney decides she's had it with Alicia and persuades Tiffany, Connie, Heather and Naomi to all go in on ostracising Alicia... I can't help but look at it in a game theory lens: the complicit mean girls don't become friends so much as hostages, and each time this ostracism tactic is consented to, their own social life becomes ever more precarious because the precedent is set and reinforced.  Aka, you're next Tiffany, you're next Connie etc.

I'm sure there are histrionic and/or narcissistic Queen Bees that fuck up ostracism and go too hard too fast and find themselves de facto ostracised.

But property damage, in terms of depriving a person of access to what is common, by sending them out, is obviously much harder to do when there's a school campus or workplace operating as that common property. However, institutions like schools expel students, workplaces fire people. Is expulsion or termination violence? Probably, technically yes. Society sanctions this violence though, in much the same way it sanctions police's ability to detain people.

The big difference is, institutions can't arbitrarily expel or incarcerate or deport people - socially agreed upon criteria has to be met. Justice has to be justified. Not so with informal social structures. Ostracism could be for sleeping with someone else's partner, to correcting them in public, to wearing the same dress to a party. Arbitrary.

But a school can't expel a student for being Jewish. For stealing property, for fighting, for doing or selling drugs, sure. Employers can't terminate an employment contract for any arbitrary reason either, and innumerous wrongful dismissal suits testify to the violence of such actions. Damages are paid.

In the same way, alright, we are no longer friends, that simply means one of two people does not enjoy nor seek the company of another. They may even actively avoid them. But the right to pick and choose who we are friends with does not extend to taking command of common property, of deciding on which table another is or isn't permitted to sit, of who their friends can be friends with.

This segue's into questions of detainment and improsonment. Are they violence? I say yes. Ostracism is like locking someone out of a very small space, where their prison cell becomes the rest of the world. One might be inclined to think of the space from which the shunned is excluded as the prison cell, the shunner locked in and the shunned locked out. But functionally, the cell walls are there. I can testify.

I can wander for days and months without coming across a 'Truman' wall, but they are there in my email, in my phone, on my socials, in my mind.

I also feel that stalking conceptually is the equal and opposite kind of violence as that of ostracism. Here I feel that few, particularly women, would disagree that stalking is violence. 'No it's just a harmless pass time.' Stalking, simplified to exclude all the other damages it does, is the insertion of someone into another's life without their consent. Ostracism is the expulsion of someone from part of  their own life, without their consent.

Lastly on this question, let's talk rights. Does a person have a right to make amends? To me the question of whether ostracism or shunning is violence is overdetermined even without appealing to being responsible for someone's emotional state (which I would avoid because that's largely why I reject the idea that 'speech is violence') but there's a question of whether ostracism is even punishment or punitive.

Hear me out. Ostracism rather than holding someone accountable is actually holding them unaccountable. In that sense it is identical to life without parole or a death sentence. I may need to inject some clarity, if the ostracism is entirely conditional on something that is completely within the ostracised control - like if they just apologized the ostracism ends, I am choosing to disqualify that as ostracism. Just like there's a large and consequential difference between permitting the incarcerated early release for good behavior and conditions of parole vs someone locked up and the key thrown away.

It's still violence to corral a group of people into coercing an apology from someone, but it's significantly better than the violence of unconditionally shunning someone. 

If you are the kind of aggressive and violent person that is fond of a good shun, my feeling is, the burden of proof is on you that the shunned cannot more constructively redress the insult.

Let me invoke Louis CK and Kevin Hart. Louis CK had distribution of his film 'I Love You Daddy' withdrawn, he lost $36 million dollars, he left the United States and stopped doing standup for a year. Kevin Hart lost his opportunity to host the Oscars. I would say, both men were held irresponsible for their transgressions. They literally couldn't respond. And for some people are still held irresponsible.

I've written about the Louis CK case before, and I can't be bothered looking up the details. Now, I'm not being dishonest when I say, I'm not sure in the legal sense what Louis' transgression actually was. I know he masturbated in front of women. Everyone knows he masturbated in front of women. I just don't know whether it constituted sexual harassment, sexual assault, public indecency or if on account of the issue of consent it occupies a gray area of subjective coercion as viewed by certain academics fixated on notions of power defining truth.

More to the point, the jacking off show had from my recollection ceased maybe 8 years or so before the article that exposed him. The same article indicated that Louis had expressed remorse and apologised to the women. It was just that it was all a private matter. For context, legally the US federal statute of limitations is 180 days, with some states providing for 300 days, or under a year.

So we had a situation where Louis had ceased the offending behavior, apologised to the offended parties, then apologized to the general public and acknowledged wrongdoing, and he stopped performing. 

Acknowledging that somebody like Tig Notaro may have a distinct and seperate grievance ie. being coerced by Louis and his manager not to talk about it or bring it up, I feel most people are stuck on the jerking off in front of women thing. 

Given that what's done, cannot be undone, I cannot imagine what more Louis could have done to respond to a behavior he had stopped engaging in.

Kevin Hart's case is much shorter. He was announced as Oscar's host. Then someone dug up homophobic comments from 7 or 8 years earlier, he stepped down. Issued an apology. And eventually he independently came to the conclusion that nothing would satisfy the mob that had mobilized against him.

In transactional analysis there's a life game called 'Now I've Got You You Son Of A Bitch' and in these high profile cases, that appears to be what is going on with cancel culture. The point of the game is not seeking restitution for damage done, but personal gratification. That's why I question whether ostracism or shunning even constitutes punishment. 

I was helped in this understanding by my friend Shamira, somewhere at about the 3 month mark of my ostracism, I was constantly ruminating on what I could do to actually respond to the situation. Of particular torture was that in my capacity as a friend, I wondered if I had made a mistake by respecting my friend's wishes to leave them alone, as they only seemed to grow angrier the more space I gave them.

Shamira informed me of her opinion, which is near as I can recall, that ostracism isn't for the benefit of the ostracised. They are, as it were, a sacrificial offering. If you got shunned, you were basically screwed. You were there as an example to the others.

So holding someone accountable, or holding them responsible generally by societal standards means serving their time, making their penance, restitution, repairs which I believe to be a fundamental human right. Ostracism functions as 'Now I've Got You You Son Of A Bitch' and in practice and function is about keeping someone irresponsible in order to maintain or cultivate the rage.

Shimmy Shimmy Ya.

Fuck it, I will expound my theory of sex differences. I see these as cultural, rather than innate, though I don't see culture as arbitrary, I think it is determined by environment, technology, and yes even genes are going to interact.

For some reason an epiphany came watching Old Dirty Bastard's film clip for Shimmy Shimmy Ya, expressly when he sings:

For the ladies who know me tell them who the fuck I be

For the niggas who know me tell them who the fuck I be

I was like, what a perfect example of masculine aggression. ODB is calling on those in the know to inform the ignorant that he is not to be treated as any old person, he's ODB.

Masculine aggression (not restricted to males) takes the form: 'Get the fuck out of my way.' and Feminine aggression (not restricted to females) takes the form: 'Get the fuck back in line.'

One form of aggression is non-conformist: 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me.' and all that. The other form of aggression is ultra conformist: 'We all like the fuchsia bridesmaid dresses.'

 And in the spirit of ODB, for anyone who can't handle the cognitive dissonance that ostracism, shunning, cold shoulder etc. is violence might cause, I'd say fuck off you know exactly what you're doing - you are trying to inflict hurt and suffering on somebody. That's the whole point.

Ostracism as Passing the Buck

So in my case, after my own ostracism commenced I disrespected the wishes of my ostracism in two ways. 

The first, I attribute to ambiguity which I'll elaborate on further later. But I would describe these breaches as 'testing', they are kind of embarrassing, or shame inducing in hindsight because they basically punctuated long periods of hoping with these break downs of will and essentially communicating in an indirect way 'hey, is my ostracism over?' Basically, inane emails sent as if nothing had happened. 

I can forgive myself these transgressions though, because it's in my view, so human. If you dump someone in darkness they are going to reach for the walls. It's even puppy like behavior when the amygdala or whatever fails to hold the puppy in the sitting position and sends it charging at whatever the stimulus is.

The second type, was that I reserved for myself the right to make apologies. So by far the most substantial breaches of my ostracism, or shunning, are apology emails. I don't feel ashamed or embarrassed about this at all. If you've done something wrong, you should apologize.

That said, I could appreciate that if any third party were to look at them, they might see somebody bumbling through the darkness, walking into every coffee table in the room and collapsing with a foot in their mouth.

They might look clumsy, incoherent, egocentric, tone-deaf whatever. 

There's a really good reason for that. I got ostracised. Not confronted. Not informed. I got absolutely no means of feedback to figure out exactly what it was I'd done, that was so unforgivable. 

Okay, so say, unambiguously I was in the wrong, and I did something worth severe punishment. The punishment feels severe, I can testify to that. I get I upset them. But now, I am somebody else's problem. Like the troll two billy goats gruff left to their bigger brother to deal with.

'That guy's dangerous. Better lock him out with everyone else. Better climb the fire escape and pull the ladder up.'

And to be clear, it's not that say somebody with a toxic friend or partner is obliged to suffer that toxicity to protect the rest of society. It's more:

'I don't want to see you anymore.'

'Okay. Obviously my intuitions and judgement failed me. Can I get some clarification in order to avoid doing this to anybody else?'

'I said I don't want to see you anymore.'

And sure, somebody manipulative could try to enter an argument, that's something to be wary of. But I would maintain that there are ways to maintain your boundaries. Like:

'Sure, put them in a letter. It might take me a while to respond.'

Ostracism though just passes the offender intact to the next person they will offend. And in my case, I suffer when I make my friends suffer, so ostracism asks me and somebody else to maximise their chances of suffering again.

Friendship, Responsibility, Boundaries and Ambiguity

In my own experience of ostracism, something that amplified the distress of the process was ambiguity. I got a request for space, it was also clear my friend was angry and upset. I acknowledged and then the spacing began.

So initially it seemed like a big but temporary deal. A week? A fortnight? A month? Two months? Three?

It was also entirely the case that initially we both stood to benefit from that space. I needed to cool off and collect myself too. Initially I had no idea that I was being/had been ostracized.

I have a folder in my email labelled 'autopsy' that collected (mercifully) the email exchange that stimulated the ostracism response. I went through that, not attempting to rationalize my actions and absolve myself. But to interrogate what and why and when and how I'd gone wrong. 

I would revisit it every time I saw or heard something that gave me a new framework through which to understand where I'd caused the hurt. Frankly, my attitude was that whatever my friend had said or done was irrelevant given my objective was to ensure our future friendship was safe for them, safe to resume, and how to demonstrate that.

The memories fade and decay, but somewhere between three and six months it became clear that the space was in fact, here to stay. 

Time for delineation, you may be familiar with 'two to tango' given often as advice or reality checks to spurned people unable to deal with a breakup of a romantic relationship. I do not feel friendship is synonymous with relationship. You cannot be someone's boyfriend, girlfriend or otherwise intimate partner without their consent. 

It is simply the case that people are friends to people who are not their friends. Or let me put it this way, Jimmy is Timmy's friend, but Timmy is not Jimmy's friend.

I have in my life, ended friendships, because I came to the realization that I was not that person's friend. I even wound up shunning them, which I regret immensely. I hurt them pretty bad. I ended the shunning and wound up just explaining. That hurt them worse, no doubt because I'd dicked them around with shunning first. 

I see them around though, it's civil, we can converse, there's no need to avoid each other we just aren't friends anymore. I don't know though, they may still be my friend. I don't check, I don't test it out.

With my own ostracism, it is as a friend that I submitted to it, beyond the ambiguous phase where I was testing the boundaries by sending emails intended to 'test the waters' until I was rebuked.

Respecting someone's wishes and boundaries is how one can fork oneself when it comes to being ostracized. 

Why?

Because friends don't ostracize their friends. 

But as a friend, if you are told by a person that the friendly thing to do is to fuck off right out of town (and just to be clear, by the time I left town,  I had accepted as fully I could that I was dead, or persona non-grata to this person. I didn't flee the country because of ostracism or anything.) Then that is how you be their friend. 

That's pretty much all you can do, as best you can.

On the flipside, you can't be a friend, and subject someone to torture. Ostracism is torture, particularly when the condition of uncertainty is built in. 

Scenes come to mind from movies you probably haven't seen, or shows you don't remember. Like when David Spader's character in 'Just Shoot Me' is sent on an assignment to a new office not knowing he has been ostracised by George Segal's boss character. Or in 'The White Tiger' where the protagonist is brought in and his masters are suddenly all friendly to him and saying he is family as they press him to sign a confession that he was driving a vehicle that killed a child. Or Shutter Island where Leo Dicaprio finally has it revealed that he isn't a visitor to the asylum but a permanent patient. 

Alas, I have to grant, it's difficult in the moment to say 'you screwed up and I don't want to repair it, I just want you gone forever. I choose not to confront this.' and I give the benefit of the doubt that the major driver of the ambiguity was that my shunner believed also that it would be temporary.

The moment I really knew that I had lost a friend, was my dog died. She died on her 16th birthday. I'd had her half of my life. That can't happen again unless we get a dog breed that can live to 40. My friend knew what that dog meant to me, and when she died I emailed them and two other friends that knew my dog. My two other friends, as friends do, responded with their condolences. My friend kept their silence, and I knew, I was not their friend anymore.

If I can't move you with my story of a dog, maybe you can pretend you're a football coach on superbowl sunday and while you are trying to give the team a pep call your wife calls asking for a divorce...

How Do They Treat You When You're In the Wrong?

This I learned from dogs. Or maybe... about dogs. Dogs are good teachers in all matters that don't relate to planning for the future.

So it's a generalization, but if a dog submits (rolls onto it's back) to another dog, and that other dog attacks them, it's fairly safe to say the attacking dog has behavioural/socialization issues. 

It might seem grossly unfair, but I maintain the ability to judge people when I've already been found by myself and or them to be in the wrong. 

I was making a round of apologies to my friends for basically selfishly leaning on them to pursue an addiction, and one of my best friends when I apologised to him unexpectedly unloaded on me with years of pent up dissatisfaction.

We are still best friends, and I took all his feedback on board and tried to redress the issues he raised. I'm still trying almost a decade later. I also told him about my dog theory and he in turn took that on board, so it was quite a constructive exchange. 

Interestingly the friend that shunned me was on that same apology tour and was the only one to refuse my apology on account of the behavior I was apologizing for they shared and hadn't reached the point of being willing to cease it.

Just for the record, I have two emails pinned permanently to the top of my inbox, and one of them is a friend's peerless response to my apology:

Who are you? 

Come on don't need do that, we are always side by side. 

So, love is free to you to give. 

Keep asking me my love to you. 

You can get it as much as you want and whenever. 

Brian of Nazareth said 'Judge not lest ye be judged' and it holds true. If you've been ostracized, maybe as a friend, you have to respect that ostracism, but you don't have to respect the choice to ostracize you.

Which I don't. Beyond it being cruel and unusual, it doesn't appear to be effective. My friend, (my friend) went from seeming together, mature and responsible to just getting angrier, and more afraid the less they confronted me and the more time passed. They seemed to grow in their incapacity.

I was talking it over with my friend Jon, or rather we were talking about the concept of forgiveness, which very few people get the direction of. The common intuition/misperception appears to be that if you don't forgive somebody, you hold some kind of power over them.

I believe the reverse is true. I think most people conflate forgiveness with endorsement and that's where they get caught up. My friend Jon said, and it made an impression on me:

'If you don't forgive someone, then you're letting them live in your heart and your head.' 

On reflection, I think it's worse than that. Particularly in the case of permanent ostracism. I feel someone out there actually maintains a shrine to the worst incarnation of me, while depriving themselves of my best. I think that's what ostracism takes.

Tiger by the Tail

Somebody eats your lunch out of the office kitchen fridge. So you burn down their house.

There's a threshold where the punishment exceeds the crime. 

Another reason I can't respect ostracism, is the ease with which for the shunner, you wind up holding a tiger by the tail, and if you let go that tail...

To be clear, this isn't a threat. If my shunning were to end tomorrow, all I'd do is probably cry, like the Kid Detective, at the hours of friendship lost over 8 years that can't be got back.

The thing is, that there was this sweet spot between the 3 month and 1 year mark, where I was at peak contrition. I took responsibility, I was apologetic, I came to them on my knees, and they chose to turn the thumbscrews tighter. That's where my loss of respect became salient.

Somewhere in there, what was done to me, exceeded in damage, what I had done to them. 

Yes, you can argue that I kicked things off. That I 'started it'. My feeling though is that by that logic, it leaves us defenseless in situations where say, a lover that discovered an infidelity murders their partner. I maintain that all we can take responsibility for are our actions, we can't take responsibility for someone else's reaction. 

When I play out the ever more remote prospect of reconciliation, I imagine what would take priority is my initial insult. Parked in the 'parking lot' or 'bike rack' is the issue of their response - my ostracism. Reconciliation isn't really possible if we don't discuss the fact that they shunned me for the better part of a decade and counting, for my transgression. And yeah, I take into account that at a certain point maintaining ostracism is much more an act of omission rather than commission. Most days I don't think about it, I'm sure it's the same for them.

That's kind of the tiger they have by the tail. I think what also makes it difficult is that, in the course of 8 years, I managed to forgive myself.

I know what I did, I feel confident I know why I did it, and I haven't done it again. I actually don't need their forgiveness. (and one never does.)

7 years ago, to read the emails I sent, induced such shame that I could feel the blood drain from my orbital frontal cortex. I literally experienced psychosomatic blindness trying to force myself to confront myself.

As recently as four years ago, which I think was the last time I reviewed my emails, I basically saw a few sloppy things here and there I would change, but that it was basically okay.

And that's a big risk of ostracism - you get angrier, and the shunned gets better. I think there were probably even some things I chuckled at, much like when I randomly pick out a blog post I wrote ten or fifteen years ago.

Certainly it helps to not feel shame if you know you already apologized for something you did. It recontextualizes it.

I think what I've outlined here, as a 'Tiger by the Tail' scenario, is actually a revelation that helped me finally accept my ostracism. 

It's the curious case where the power dynamic shifts. I'm no longer belly up unable to look them in the eye. I likely see the situation as they would have to see it, to initiate a reconciliation - it wasn't such a big deal, perhaps they overreacted.

But the ostracism is a big deal. While I accept it, it's something I wish my friend hadn't done, because it's hard to come back from, even if there's an understandable ulterior motive, or circumstances in their life. But...it can't be good for anyone if ostracism is sustained by shame.

I hope they can forgive themselves. Precisely the kind of well wish that could make blood boil and tack another decade onto my ostracism. But their forgiveness is trading at a historic low. Unless it's the forgiveness they withhold from themselves.

An Opportunity to Sit With Shame

Shame is very very powerful. Just ask Brene Brown. I'm not going to talk much about shame, just that in my opinion, there's almost nothing a person won't do to not feel shame. If you've been ostracized, be cautious of self-medicating.

Some people are natural 'fuck you' people when they are admonished. A bunch of us though, it just confirms some deeply held belief that we are worthless pieces of shit.

What I will say for ostracism, is that it gives ample opportunity to sit with and experience shame in your body. To recognize and make peace with it. The hollowing out feeling, the implosion of the meat of your face. The psychosomatic blindness. The deindividuation.

Like eating a porcupine though, once I started sitting with my shame and making peace with it, I didn't stop. That shame, has no power over me.

Maybe think of being ostracized as like winning a free entry into an ultramarathon you hadn't trained for. That's the opportunity to seize.

Surviving/Making the most of Ostracism

At two weeks I told myself three months. At three months I was already telling myself a year. Between the second and fifth year, it was only fleeting moments I remembered and cared.

I saw them once, on the street, I had broken my usual routine because I got a flat tire and was cutting through a pedestrian heavy area with my bike. I saw them, they didn't see me, near as I can tell. They seemed happy, I kept walking.

Diogenes of Sinope was abducted by pirates to be sold as a slave. I can't find the anecdote, it was maybe in a video when I was binging Diogenes, but he complained to the pirates that his breakfast was insufficient. They gave him food, and the other captured slaves asked him how he could eat in circumstances like this, and he was basically 'my complaint has been rectified'. 

Cynicism is Stoicism Plus. The best friends the shunned and ostracised have are acceptance, forgiveness and responsibility.

For a while responsibility might involve soul searching, contrition, restitution. You'll probably grieve. Even before I knew the ostracism was permanent, I cried a lot in the first two months. It's a good opportunity to listen to Pink Floyd, anything else that makes you purge that sadness.

After a while though responsibility becomes an obligation to just make the most of things.

Your prison cell, your island of exile is so vast. There's no need to forget, just wander.

This was my prison cell:

This was my prison cell:

This was my prison cell:

I'm still in my prison cell, and life is good. 

It's not that my friend is dead to me, just I dead to them. I have dead friends, I still love and care about them, so 'dead to me' doesn't make much sense anyway. 

I've written about my friend's suicide, and much as that clearly fucked me up. Ostracism hurts worse. Because it wasn't everyone, just me.

You've been exiled to the literal rest of your life. Every day the number of things you've unwittingly said goodbye to, grows, be that friends or family, or pastimes you enjoy. Allow the things you know or fear you can never enjoy again to preoccupy your mind as little as possible.

Bake something. Do something. Go somewhere. Not to flee them, or yourself. But to go to somewhere.

And yes, I would be remiss if I said, just as I feel ostracism is the likely wrong reaction to conflict, there are wrong reactions to ostracism, that you are responsible for.

Do it wrong you get a restraining order, or a jail sentence. 

Hope is going to torture you, desperation will fuck you up.

So if you've been ostracized. I'm sorry. Good luck. Make the most of it. The water isn't so cold.

And I'd rather be shunned, than shun.