Conflicts are inevitable in a healthy relationship. Such conflicts are essential to develop boundaries and feelings, specifically the feeling of grief. The concept of mourning a loved one, while trying to move on, is peculiar because you feel as if you are drifting from the memories and life you shared with your past lover. In other cases, one even falls out of love. It’s an unexpected feeling, one that you can’t decipher and forces you and your guilt to sit in silence. Ariana Grande’s fifth studio album from 2019, “thank you, next,” includes one of her most iconic tracks, “ghostin,” which captures such a sensation. Grande has successfully created a song that resembles the painful feeling of indifference due to your past lingering at the soles of your feet. 

Grande wrote “ghostin” to encapsulate the wish to escape from your past, especially her past relationship with Mac Miller, where he unfortunately passed away months after their break up. She admits to hardships in wishing her current lover at the time, Pete Davidson, was actually Miller due to her feelings of grief coalesced with shame. This is an anthem that characterizes the bewildering feeling of self loathing and insecurity. 

Verse 1

“I know you hear me when I cry

I try to hold it in at night

While you’re sleeping next to me

But it’s your arms that I need this time (this time)

Look at the cards that we’ve been dealt

If you were anybody else

Probably wouldn’t last a day

Every tear’s a rain parade from hell (from hell)”

The song begins with an introduction that mimics Miller’s sample “2009,” almost as a memoir with a synth melody. Grande explains her night routines beside Davidson, and how difficult the position of being a loyal partner is when she is crying about her ex in her boyfriend’s arms. This irony attests to how absurd it might feel to have the audacity to be perceived as loyal and worthy of one’s love when you’re still being haunted by a spirit. 

Verse 2

“Though I wish he were here instead

Don’t want that living in your head

He just comes to visit me

When I’m dreaming every now and then (and then)”

Here, Grande is expressing how she doesn’t mourn to intentionally hurt Davidson, but to help strengthen their relationship, even if she comes across as high-maintenance during such rough times. She speaks out for the other men and women who share the same dilemma, and places a gentle reminder that helping is never linear, even when you profess your love for someone new. Grande also reassures her listeners that ghosts are believed to be more of a sensation that provokes feelings of sorrow and simultaneously feelings of warmth, knowing their physical makeup is gone, but shared memories are not. 

Chorus:

“I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again

Over him, mm

I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again

‘Stead of ghostin’ him”

Grande captures the longing and yearning for another, as Davidson watches, trying to attain a balance between feeling degraded and understanding. Grande is attempting to grasp a silver lining by coming off as patient with Davidson’s feelings of betrayal, similar to the universality of relationships ending due to unmet boundaries and exhaustion of absent-minded behavior. “Ghostin” is a term identical to neglect. Ghosting one’s past is inevitable because it will haunt the corners of your mind, whether you’ve accepted it or not. 

–

Now, in the present day, Grande is a testament to how grief allows one to blossom through her contributions in cinema and her self-love album, “Eternal Sunshine.” With that being said, it is normal to put fodder into these feelings of nostalgia as long as you believe that what you are doing is right for you and the best of both worlds. In other words, communication within conflicts is an auxiliary to fortify the grounds of a relationship and to distinguish what is morally right or wrong.