Some pain doesn’t leave. It sits in the basement, filing its nails, waiting for the moment your nervous system is finally stable enough to handle the punchline. If I had tried to feel all this a year ago, it would’ve destroyed me. And I promised myself he was never going to be the thing that destroyed me. I kept that promise like a contract signed in blood and glitter.

So now I’m here, letting myself feel the things I blocked, dodged, swallowed, compartmentalized. I got the previews in July and October. Mini-tsunamis. This one’s the full ocean.

I recently quit snus, my three-year nicotine pacifier. Anytime I felt anything, I’d pop one in like I was silencing an alarm. I picked it up when I was already wrecked, spiritually concussed, and raw. My nervous system couldn’t handle basic life. Snus helped me cope, then it owned me.

Now my system can actually hold me without collapsing. So snus is out, herbal tea is in, and my skin looks like it’s on some kind of redemption arc. At least something’s glowing.

And now comes the release.

I needed care when you needed “quiet.” You ghosted me for the first two days of the year after New Year’s Eve. The cosmic reset. The moment everyone celebrates the future, and I was standing there realizing you didn’t think of me at all.

I bought you a massage gun for Christmas because your hip hurt. And because I knew we were ending, and I wanted you to still get comfort until someone else gave it to you. You didn’t even write me a card. It wasn’t about the object, it was about being considered. You said you were going to. I got the text instead. 

I kept smiling. Fake ones. Drank, smoked, abused snus; anything to avoid breaking down in front of you. My heart felt like it had taken a thousand papercuts and I still served afternoon snacks and cleaned up so you’d come home to calm instead of chaos. You didn’t want any of that, apparently.

You’d say you felt like I didn’t respect your opinions and feelings, and I apoligize for making you feel that way, I was simply expressing my own feelings and thoughts, and just because I didn’t agree with you, didn’t mean what you thought it did. You didn’t even acknowledge the effect your actions would have on me, because you didn’t care. 

You said you appreciated my efforts, probably because you sensed how unhappy I was beneath the surface but didn’t want to address it. I needed you to acknowledge the damage you caused. What was done, traumatized me. A year later, I’m still climbing out of that vortex. I didn’t deserve any of it. Sure, I annoyed you back when you were pissing me off, because I have my own sense of justice as much as you do, but what you did tipped the scale off. 

Because I had the same urges you had. The same thoughts. A little after my birthday, I felt the same temptation you acted on. I stopped myself. I said, “No, I can’t do that to him.”

But that’s how I knew. I felt anxious and stressed out since then. Even when I tried gaslighting my own intuition and tried calming myself down, I felt something was wrong. 

That’s the difference between us. I feel deeply, I act impulsively sometimes, sure. But I don’t weaponize it. You did. You gave the silent treatment. Call it whatever you want to call it, it felt like that to me at the time. You lied. You made excuses. I let you have those moments because a) I didn’t want to cause drama, and get called crazy, and b) the more you let people think they can do whatever they want and get away with it, the more they show their true colors, and the heavier the karmic load gets. 

You didn’t care how it would scar me. How it would deepen wounds I was already carrying. “It’s her problem, or the next guy’s.” That’s how you lived.

Is that why, months later, the only thing you gave me was: “No, I just didn’t reply to you.” That was your explanation for treating me like a nuisance while I chased you for closure, calling, texting, begging for a human conversation. For basic human decency. You ended it over text, vanished, and then haunted my dreams for two months straight with this theme night after night: me running after you to talk, you avoiding me.

That does something to a person. Being invisible like that. Being treated like a glitch in someone’s peripheral vision instead of a human being you once held, touched, laughed with. Not being seen, not being acknowledged, not even granted the basic dignity of being heard. And no, I don’t have the emotional range of a grain of rice. I can care about people even when we’re over. I don’t need a title, a status update, or a neatly printed label to tell me whether someone’s feelings matter. But you do, apparently. For you, caring only exists if there’s a nameplate attached. The fact that someone is alive, breathing, and feeling right in front of you isn’t enough for you to extend humanity when it doesn’t serve your interests. And that leaves a mark. A very real one.

I still dream about you. The scales are still imbalanced. Silence doesn’t erase karma. Sometimes in my dreams my subconscious paints you as someone who cares. Which is what would balance out the scale eventually. 

People didn’t let me grieve. They congratulated me. Like I should’ve been throwing confetti. Like I hadn’t lost someone I loved. I had to pretend I was relieved, unbothered, “free.” I couldn’t even tell my mother anything, she hates you, and strangers projected their opinions onto a story they didn’t understand. No one let me have feelings.

You became the villain. I became the fool for ever loving you.

And I had zero support. So I kept it all inside. And here I am, almost a year later, still dealing with it alone, still waking up from dreams where you’re avoiding me like it’s a sport.

I don’t regret staying. It was part of a lesson I apparently had to learn. I do regret masking the pain. Pretending everything was fine.

Because here’s the truth: I enjoyed being with you. I knew our time was finite. I wanted us to end without hurting each other. But that’s not what happened. You left scars anyway. You always said you had a feeling that it wasn’t going to end well. I never had that feeling. You ended it badly. That is on you. 

And I’m finally letting myself feel it. All of it. And in this world where emotions are treated like a contagious disease; where hurting after being hurt is branded as “pathetic” I refuse to play along. None of this makes me dumb. It makes me human. It makes me a young woman still learning how humans… well, human. It means my heart didn’t calcify into a decorative rock. It means I’m still capable of love, depth, and not closing my heart just because someone else couldn’t handle their own side of the story with grace.