When all's said and done

There are some heartbreaks that don’t burn - they linger.
They don’t scream - they hum.
And they don’t kill you - but they change you in such fundamental ways, you find yourself walking around with a different gait, speaking slower, sleeping less.

Months ago, I was in love with someone I genuinely believed I’d spend my life with. She didn’t just break my heart - she vanished. No explanation, no conversation. Her silence became a language I was forced to learn. One I hated speaking, but grew fluent in.

And so, I started writing.

This blog became my way of staying afloat. I wrote each night not out of habit but out of desperation. I wrote hoping she would read. I wrote to make the pain mean something. I wrote so I wouldn’t call her. So I wouldn’t beg. So I wouldn’t fall apart completely.

What I didn’t expect was that in trying to write my way back to her, I was really writing my way back to myself.

But let’s not pretend this is a triumphant ending. It’s not.
I still miss her.
I still think about what we were supposed to be.
And in my quietest moments, I still imagine a world where she comes back - not to explain, not to apologize - but just to be there, like she used to.

There’s a kind of love that refuses to fade, no matter how logical you try to be about it.
You can tell yourself she’s gone. You can remind yourself of the hurt. You can read the messages back and say, “This is why.”
But none of it ever really touches the part of you that still loves her.
That part doesn't care about logic.
It remembers the way she laughed.
It remembers the nights she cried.
It remembers the plans you made, the cities you dreamed of, the lives you imagined.
And most painfully, it remembers that she chose to walk away from all of it without a word.

She is someone else’s now.
Maybe she already was, even while I was still loving her.

And I’ve come to accept that.

That doesn’t mean I’ve “moved on” in the way people like to describe.
I didn’t erase her. I didn’t forget her.
Instead, I built a life around the ache. I kept going with it.

I sat for Step 2 CK and scored a decent enough score - not despite the pain, but because I had to carry it like a second skin. That number isn’t just an academic accomplishment - it’s proof that even when I was emotionally gutted, I still showed up for myself. I still studied. I still pushed through.

That is its own kind of victory.

I don’t resent her anymore. I don’t even blame her.
I think she did what she felt was right for her. And I hope she’s okay.
But I also know that she left me with a silence I will never fully escape.

You don’t walk away from a love like that unscathed.
But you do walk away. Eventually.
Even if it’s limping. Even if it’s alone.

There are days when I’m fine. There are nights when I’m not.
But the difference is - 
I don’t write these things to win her back anymore.
I write them to let myself breathe.
I write them to give shape to a kind of grief that’s too quiet to be seen but too loud to be ignored.

I will always love her.
Maybe not in the same way.
Maybe not in a way that wants her back.
But in the way you love the version of yourself that once believed something beautiful was possible.
In the way you remember a city not because you live there anymore, but because it once felt like home.

This is the final entry.
Not because I’ve run out of things to say.
But because the part of me that needed this space - this ritual - is ready to be still.
There are no more arguments to make. No more verses to offer.
Only the acceptance that some goodbyes don’t sound like slamming doors.
They sound like silence.
Like time passing.
Like Neruda once wrote - love is so short, forgetting is so long.

So I’ll end with the only words that ever matched my own:

---

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, “The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s.
As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda (translated by W.S. Merwin)