No contact is really rough. A part of me just wants to say “fuck it”, open up our chat and text “hey”. Just to illicit some sort of reaction. Maybe as proof of existence— that I matter, or mattered to this person at some point. But my ego recounts how terrible he made me feel towards the end… My sound mind tells me this is a dopamine trap that won’t end well. That I am better than these impulses at 1 AM just because I feel sad and lonely again. And I shouldn’t text cause, if I’m being really honest, it’s way more intimate to never speak again.
I recently rewatched La La Land in the theaters, and it inspired me into spiraling on the tragedy of having exes that knew you so well. Because not only do you lose a lover, you lose a very close companion. I wrote the following in my La La Land review: to never speak to that someone who once meant so much to you once upon a time, and to have known you on such a deep level, is so bizarre to me. This also makes me think of this half-joke post on Twitter that I saw, something along the lines of, “pls dont ignore me i touched your private parts.” Like yeah, it’s so tragic to live the rest of your life knowing that there are people who once touched me physically and emotionally so intimately that I will probably never talk to again… I find it so, so hard to let that go.
Having gone through that semi-recently, I want to expand on this feeling, the psychological whiplash of a no-contact breakup. It sucks cause you have to pretend nothing ever happened. But I am not just grieving the loss of that connection. I am grieving the version of myself that only existed around them. The inside jokes, the shared interests, the way they saw you at 1 AM when you’re a total wreck emotionally and physically, and those reassurances that will wash down to the drains of time… What if I only did it because they told me they believed in me? Not that I was craving for their validation, but what if their love made me love myself a bit more? Is that pathetic to say? What do you mean I most probably won’t talk to this person anymore?
Taking a trip down memory lane here, the very last thing I told the boy that broke my heart in early 2025 was, “I hope to reintroduce myself to you again someday.” Subconciously AND conciously, I was trying to close that door without ever locking it. I truly believed it back then. I thought that once I heal from him and he heals from, well, whatever he needs healing from, that we may reconvene in South Bay and grab coffee. Perhaps we couldn’t be as close, but we could reconnect as friends again. That he would come back to me, tell me all that he’s learned, and show me how great he could be with all the potential that I saw in him. Now that I’ve acquired some emotional and chronological distance from that saga, I discovered that this is very, extremely unlikely to happen. I’m truly over that person and have zero desire to reach out. And I still enjoy that intimacy with never reaching out— I feel great knowing I am actively choosing myself every day over mourning over him and his potential. And it’s poetic, the way it ended. I don’t want to reintroduce myself to him anymore, but back then, clinging onto the “letting the lamp burn while I wait for him to grow up” sorta hope truly felt like the best way to leave it.
Okay, let’s go back to my current situation. I know the tragic intimacy lies in never speaking again. You’re not supposed to bug your ex and cling to the past, especially when you know it’s not going to work out. But I am a grieve addict. Everywhere I go, I find pieces of him. I pass by the restaurants we’ve been together and wonder who got the custody of which restaurant. I see the Nintendo Switch, and I reminisce about the times we played Smash with his arms around me. I read the Letterboxd reviews of the movies I watched with him. I see a restaurant on Google Maps and think about the times I said we would go. I paint every town black. I replay scenes over and over again. You can practically see the black veil over my head with all that grieving.
Perhaps that is not healthy. Perhaps I should stop lying awake at night, wondering if my exes are doing okay without me. Chances are, they’re just fine. They’re boys. They can last a whole week without showering. But I guess it’s my ego talking, that’s like, trying so hard to emotionally compensate for the loss I am experiencing too. “It’s fine, you got rid of a manchild.” “That’s trash taking themselves out.” I can repeat that over and over again, but honestly, how can I ever hate someone who I once cared about so much? Who am I hurting but myself? Why can’t I honor someone I once admired, even after they’ve hurt me? My love and care for people isn’t binary; I can’t turn it on/ off. And hate is too strong of a word, it’s more like disappointment. Disappointment for such an underwhelming ending, with an underwhelming man.
And never talking again is just my way of punishing both of us, I suppose. They are not dying to talk to me any more than I am dying to talk to them. Of course I know it’s fucking over. To grieve is to begin the process of acceptance. And the intimacy in never talking again is like, “I want to know if I still matter to you, but I am scared of the answer, plus I think I know the answer already, so I’d rather cling onto the grief than humiliate myself again.”
The intimacy is like Schrödinger’s Love. If I don’t know the answer to that question, both truths can exist. The two truths being, “what we had was great and I care deeply about them and they care deeply about me,” and “it didn’t work out and it’s over, we no longer participate in each other’s lives for an extremely valid reason”. To break no contact is like, violating that divine ambiguity.
Or, perhaps the cat is alive, but both of us are too scared to open it in case it’s dead. It would suck to open Schrödinger’s box, only to find a dead fucking cat. As I said, maybe their love made me love myself a bit more, so the correct way of moving on is to sustain that love so you don’t need to outsource this confidence to someone else ever again. But I mourn that version of me that felt loved and reassured by this random stranger I picked. I mourn for that feeling every time I think it is going somewhere, that I can finally say someone sees me for the sweetie pie that I am. I was rooting for them rooting for me. I wish they hadn’t fumbled me the way they did. And the bottom line being, going from lovers to strangers is the worst. I know it’s for the best, but it’s so, so tragic to turn into someone they used to know. I guess the Schrödinger theory on this tragic intimacy is the final souvenir I get from my short-lived relationship. I’ll be okay.