Then came the conversation I am not proud of.
Not because my pain wasn’t real.
But because sometimes, when we hurt too much, we end up saying things we don’t know how to take back.
I had reached the end of my patience.
Exhaustion had piled on top of longing.
Longing on top of fear.
And fear on top of all the questions that had remained unanswered.
During that time, I had sometimes tried to numb the pain with alcohol.
I thought that, for a few hours, my thoughts might become quieter.
That I might stop looking at my phone.
Stop searching for explanations.
Stop wondering where everything we had built had gone.
But alcohol didn’t make the pain disappear.
It only gave it a louder voice.
And at a moment when I no longer knew how to handle everything I was feeling, that voice found its way into our conversation.
I asked questions.
I demanded explanations.
I made accusations.
I tried to achieve through the intensity of my words what patience had failed to bring me.
Perhaps I believed that if I could express my pain strongly enough, I would finally be understood.
Perhaps I hoped that a powerful reaction would bring an equally powerful answer.
That the silence would break.
That I would finally discover what had happened.
At one point, I said something that would stay with me for a long time.
“You destroyed me.”
Three words.
So few.
And yet so heavy.
In that moment, it was exactly how I felt.
As though someone had entered a part of my life I had kept closed for a long time, switched on the light, and then walked away without explaining why.
But later, I began to understand that there is a difference between expressing how deeply something hurts and placing the entire weight of that pain on someone else’s shoulders.
I’m not saying I had no reason to suffer.
I did.
I’m not saying my questions were unfair.
I needed answers.
But once the anger faded, I began thinking about how some of my words must have sounded.
Especially to someone who had already told me they were going through a difficult time.
I wished I had found different words.
Words that could tell the truth without causing more pain.
Words that could explain my hurt without turning it into a weapon.
Because despite everything that had happened, there was no hatred in me.
I didn’t hate the person I had met during those summer days.
I didn’t hate the smile at the hotel.
I didn’t hate the hand that had reached for mine as we crossed the street.
I didn’t hate the gaze we had shared among the rocks, beneath the setting sun.
And I didn’t hate the person who now seemed unable to find a way to talk to me.
I was angry at everything I couldn’t understand.
At the silence.
At the distance that had grown without explanation.
At the fact that I had made room in my life for an October that was beginning to disappear.
I thought about everything I had prepared.
The photographs we were going to take.
The little gifts.
The tickets.
The plans I had carefully arranged in my mind.
That one week I had been looking forward to so much.
The dance we had promised each other.
All the mornings I had imagined before they even existed.
None of it had been a game to me.
It hadn’t been a beautiful story told simply to fill the evenings.
I had invested time.
Hope.
Courage.
And, most of all, a part of myself I didn’t give away easily.
And now I was frightened by the thought that perhaps I had been the only one investing.
That perhaps, while I was building a future in my mind, things had already begun to change on the other side of the screen.
I didn’t know whether that was true.
But the fear had become almost unbearable.
After our conversation, the silence grew even deeper.
There were no longer even painful discussions from which I hoped to understand something.
There was only my phone.
Notifications that weren’t the ones I was waiting for.
Long evenings.
Mornings when my first instinct was to check whether a message had arrived.
And a longing I couldn’t even explain to myself.
To see that face again.
Just once.
Not necessarily to fix everything.
Not necessarily to begin our story again.
But simply to look one more time at the person who, such a short time before, had made my world feel different.
Sometimes I wondered whether my memories belonged to the same reality I was living in now.
How could someone be so present one day and so distant the next?
How could just a few weeks leave behind such an enormous longing?
There were moments when I wanted to write another message.
One without accusations.
Without questions.
Without trying to get an answer.
I wanted to say I was sorry for the way I had spoken.
But not for the fact that I had been hurting.
I wanted to say that, despite the ending I could feel approaching, I was grateful.
For the days by the sea.
For the laughter.
For the outstretched hand.
For the glances through our screens.
For the way two such different lives had found a place where they could meet, even if only for a while.
I wanted to say that I wouldn’t change those days.
Not even knowing how much their memories would eventually hurt.
That I had discovered a kind of love I hadn’t known I was capable of feeling.
And that, however difficult everything had become, I didn’t want my last words to be the ones I had spoken in anger.
But I didn’t send all those sentences.
Some remained in the notes on my phone.
Others were spoken in conversations with people who had the patience to listen.
And some never became words at all.
They remained caught somewhere in my throat.
In the evenings when I tried to fall asleep.
In the mornings when I woke up with the same longing.
In the moments when I wanted to open our conversation and write only:
“I miss you.”
But I didn’t.
Because I was beginning to understand something that had once seemed impossible.
Regret and love can exist at the same time.
You can regret the way you spoke without apologizing for needing clarity.
You can acknowledge that you caused pain without denying that you were hurt.
You can love someone and still reach a point where you can no longer accept the distance they keep between you.
And sometimes, the hardest thing isn’t forgiving someone else.
It’s learning to forgive yourself.
For the words spoken too loudly.
For the questions asked again and again.
For the hopes you held on to.
For all the moments when pain spoke before your heart could.
I don’t regret loving.
I only regret that, in a moment of pain, I no longer knew how to express that love without causing hurt.
To be continued…
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