When You Say Something
We can plan the message, but not the unexpected.
So many days and nights, the sudden urge to text him crept in.
Some days it was just to see how he was.
Some days, because I missed him.
Some days, it was to say I was angry.
Some days, it was to say I was still sad.
Some days, it was just the wine…
I never did.
My notes app filled with unsent texts.
And just as much as I’m proud to have never clicked send, I’m equally proud of each of those messages I drafted.
They all came from my heart.
My truth, no censors.
I never once tried to lie to myself about how I felt.
In my last article, I wrote about the spiral… the intense and consistent urge to text him.
Sadly, it didn’t go away. I pretended it did for a while.
No matter what I did.
I wrote the article. The urge remained.
I talked about it. The urge remained.
Friends and strangers validated my feelings. The urge remained.
I distracted myself. I travelled. I healed. I laughed. I worked.
I did more self-work than most people I know over the past year. Still, the urge remained.
I told myself I was okay.
But the truth was, I wasn’t.
And I’ve never been much of an avoider… though with this, I tried to be. But even I couldn’t escape the weight of pretending I was okay when I wasn’t.
I buried it in distractions.
More healing. More doing. More moving forward.
Until finally, I said it out loud:
“I’m not okay.”
Followed by tears. And tears. And tears.
No longer holding on, or holding back, or fighting the feeling away.
I had done everything. Why wasn’t anything working?
I kept thinking to myself and then out loud to the people I trusted.
Well, I had tried everything… except for one thing.
The one thing everyone screams not to do.
The one thing that’s become a rule for heartbreak:
Don’t text him.
But that night, after nights of spiralling and self-punishment…
After admitting loudly that “I am not okay”…
I was ready to break the rule.
Maybe what I needed wasn’t to hold it all in.
Maybe I just needed to say something.
To release it.
To finally feel free.
I thought, maybe this will finally be it.
Maybe this will get him out of my mind.
But of all the things I imagined saying to him, it was never what I ended up saying.
I had prepared an honest message. One that finally said everything I had been carrying…
About how his silence hurt more than the discard.
How I grieved the loss of him like I grieved a death.
How I’ve become stronger, more whole…
But how I still deserved the apology I never got.
Just as I was ready, that one night, to send that message…
The universe intervened.
By complete chance, I found out that his father was dying.
And not long after… that he had passed.
Suddenly, the message I’d crafted so carefully didn’t matter.
All the pain I wanted to express disappeared.
That draft fell into the recently deleted.
I didn’t hesitate.
I didn’t weigh whether I owed him anything.
I just… showed up.
Just because someone I once cared for was facing a kind of loss I knew too well.
I couldn’t ignore it. That’s not who I am.
I’ve never succeeded at shutting off love.
Love may change shape, location, intensity…
But if it was once real, it stays with me… at least some part of it.
The love and care don’t vanish.
Honestly, I surprised myself with the message I did end up sending.
I even shocked my therapist.
“All that hurt and anger you wanted to express… yet the second you heard he was in pain… you went into rescue mode…”
She reminded me of what I deep down already knew:
That I’m always an inch away from becoming someone’s rescuer.
Even when they left me in pieces.
Even when I’m still cracked from it.
That instinct to rescue… It’s my blessing and my curse.
And it kicked in immediately.
All those doubts about texting him…
What I would say.
What I shouldn’t say.
And then the moment I heard of his pain,
I didn’t even re-read the text.
I typed directly into the chat… not even in my notes app.
I wrote and sent.
It was easy.
It was effortless.
I wrote to him kindly.
Genuinely.
Just with empathy.
I needed nothing back.
And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what I got.
He replied politely.
Emotionlessly.
Five versions of “thank you.” Some with emojis, some without.
And that’s when it hit me.
“Thank you” is his emotional language.
It always was.
During the relationship, after the breakup, and now.
That’s how he acknowledges care… through detached gratitude.
Never depth.
Never presence.
I even received a “How are you doing?” in there somewhere.
But I didn’t know how to answer that.
Not without removing myself from all emotion.
Not without shrinking into the same surface-level politeness he offered me.
The honest answer would’ve been:
“I’m not okay.”
But I wasn’t about to give him access to my truth.
Even so… I’m glad I reached out.
Not because he met me where I maybe hoped he would.
But because I stayed true to who I am.
Even if I still have to learn how to set firmer boundaries around that.
Even if I need to stop abandoning myself in the name of showing up for others…
Especially those who once broke me.
The truth is…
Hearing about his father broke my heart.
I never got to meet him, but he was present in many ways.
So much of my ex was shaped by him… the good and the bad.
I would have liked to meet him.
And I hope, wherever he is now, that he’s free of the suffering and pain.
I wish this kind of grief didn’t exist… for any of us.
I wish his family wasn’t going through it.
I wish no family had to.
And yes, even now, my heart goes out to my ex.
Because knowing him, he won’t face this grief head-on.
He’ll shut it down.
But that weight isn’t mine to carry.
Despite how much I care…
Despite how deeply I can empathise with loss…
I will not reach out again.
It’s not my place.
It’s not my role.
And finally, I can see that and detach myself as well.
I may have stepped into the rescuer role… so naturally…
But I won’t stay in it.
I offered what I could.
And now I can let go.
He took a lot from me.
But one thing he doesn’t get to take is my ability to love.
To care.
To show up with softness and warmth, even when he tried to harden me.
That’s my karma.
That even in the course of one night…
Going from broken and angry to soft and kind…
I still chose empathy.
I still chose to give love.
And maybe his karma is this:
That he still doesn’t know how to receive genuine love.
I wish his dad was still alive.
But I’m strangely grateful to the universe for the timing of how I found out.
His father had been sick for two months… and I didn’t hear a word.
Until the very night I was ready to press send on entirely different message.
Because it showed me something.
He’s still him.
And I’m still me.
And that’s all I needed to know.
Though I wish this wasn’t how I found out.
The apology I was silently still hoping for…
I let it go now, for good.
It became clear that nothing had changed.
Holding on for that apology is like waiting for rain in the desert.
Useless. And endlessly disappointing.
I’m not waiting anymore.
And it’s okay if I’m not okay for a little while.
This isn’t about him, or the message.
It’s about me.
About accepting my feelings.
About being gentler with myself.
No more punishing myself for what I feel, say, or need.
I deserve the same kindness I give to others…
Even those who hurt me.
Sometimes, we spiral over what we don’t say.
And sometimes… even after all the healing…
We say something anyway.
Because it’s how we love.
It’s how we show up.
Even when it still hurts sometimes.
Even when we feel a bit lost.
Even when we don’t feel okay.
And even when we’re past it.
Maybe, in a way, it’s what a kind friend once called ‘using it’.
Using the pain.
Using the emotion.
Turning it into something good.
Using it to keep loving and caring…
For what’s past.
For what’s present.
And for what’s still to come.
In my case, to remind myself:
This is who I am.
I am still me.
And nothing he says, or doesn’t say, takes that away.
In the many complex layers of the word closure…
Maybe this is just another bonus layer.
