The Unknown

When he said he was leaving, I dropped to my knees.

I didn’t even think about it—it was like my body knew before my brain did that this was it. I grabbed his hand. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe right. My voice cracked. My whole face was wet. I was full-on pleading, the way you do when someone you love is about to walk into traffic and doesn’t know it.

“Please. Don’t go. Please. I’ll fix it. I’ll change. We can—please.”

He just looked at me like I wasn’t real. Like I was already a memory. Said something about how this wasn’t healthy anymore. Said I deserved better. Said he couldn’t keep pretending.

I didn’t hear half of it.

I was on the floor, begging someone who used to hold me like I was a lifeline. And now he wouldn’t even meet my eyes.

When the door shut behind him, I screamed. Loud and ugly. My whole body shook like I was coming off something. Maybe I was.

The days after didn’t feel like days. They felt like punishment.

I stopped eating unless someone reminded me. My apartment looked like a crime scene—laundry piles, cold coffee, half-eaten takeout that started growing mold. I couldn’t bring myself to clean anything. It felt like erasing him.

I called him, more than once. I left voicemails I wish I could delete from the universe.

“I love you. You can’t just do this. I know we’re broken, but we’ve been broken before. We get through it, right?”

I never heard back.

It made me reckless. I went out too late. Drank too much. Binged and watched movies that made everything feel worse. I didn’t want anybody else. I just wanted him.

I went through every phase of heartbreak like I was on a schedule—numb, desperate, furious, hopeless. Then back to desperate again.

I remember sitting on the floor of my closet one night. Just sitting there, surrounded by clothes and dust and silence. I hadn’t moved in hours. Just stared at the last hoodie he left behind like it might breathe if I waited long enough.

That’s when I realized I didn’t know who I was without him. I’d wrapped myself so tightly around his moods, his rhythms, his love, that when he left, it was like someone peeled off my skin.

That’s not romantic. That’s trauma.

Therapy didn’t fix me, but it kept me from crashing the car. Friends pulled me back one conversation at a time. I started writing again. Started running, because it hurt less than feeling. I deleted his number. Then memorized it anyway.

Healing wasn’t a straight line. It was more like dragging myself out of a grave with broken hands.

But I got there. Eventually. Slowly.

Three years later, I ran into him at a bookstore.

No warning. No buildup. Just turned the corner, and there he was—hair longer, face older, eyes still familiar in that gut-punch kind of way.

I froze. He blinked like he wasn’t sure if I was real.

We talked. Stumbled through small talk. Caught up in that awkward, too-loud voice people use when they’re trying to sound casual but feel like they might collapse.

Then he said it. Quiet. Careful.

“I still think about you. More than I should.”

I felt the air leave my lungs. Not in that magical, movie way. In the what the hell do I do with this kind of way.

He asked if I wanted to get coffee sometime. Said no pressure. Just… maybe it’d be nice.

And I said yes.

Not because I was still broken. But because I wasn’t.

We’re not back together—not yet. Maybe never. But we talk. We laugh. We remember things out loud that used to only hurt in silence. We don’t pretend like the past didn’t happen. We carry it between us, but it’s lighter now.

Sometimes love doesn’t die. It just goes into hibernation.

Sometimes begging isn’t pathetic. It’s just the sound of someone who didn’t know how to let go.

And sometimes, years later, you get to sit across from the person who broke you—whole again—and realize you still want to try.

Not because you need them.

But because they still see you. And this time, they don’t look away.