Broken without closure

Grief Still Echoes

There is a version of sadness that doesn’t end just because the relationship does. It lingers. Because our love lingered. The sadness, however, rearranged my daily life. It changed the way I breathe, the way I exist in a room, the way I brace myself when my phone dings.

Sadness is the kind of grief that keeps unfolding after the break—through the silence, through the unanswered questions, through the responsibilities left behind when someone else walks away with a lighter load. It stays heavy as you unpack your role in this experience and all of your previous experiences. You grieve more than just the discard.

Lately, I’ve been wrestling with the version of myself that comes out when I speak to my ex. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t who I want to be. I become reactive, sharp, volatile. I say extreme things I don’t want to say—things like “I hate you” or “How can you look yourself in the mirror?” Often times, things that are even worse. The words erupt from a place inside me that feels cornered, desperate for clarity, aching for truth. It's a unstable way to beg to be seen. To be heard. To be recognized as the person still putting in all of the effort.

Each time I lose control I am angry with myself. Yet I do it again. And I know exactly why it happens: Because I’m carrying pain she will not look at. Because I’m holding everything she left behind. Because I’m the only one paying the emotional debt for choices she made quickly and easily.

Searching for Answers

What I want from her sounds simple on paper but has proven nearly impossible in practice: accountability, honesty, and emotional acknowledgment.

Not vague, polite admissions. Not the watered-down “yes, I know I hurt you.”

I want her to name the specific moments that shattered something in me.

I want her to tell me what parts of our relationship were real for her—when she loved me, what she loved, what she saw in us.

I want to know what a friendship would look like, because I shared my vision openly and she dismissed it without offering her own.

I also want to know whether the relationship she’s in now feels worth the destruction she left behind. Whether she would make the same choices if she understood the depth of the wound she caused. Whether she ever looks at this woman and remembers I had to break for her to step in.

These questions live in me like restless animals, pacing.

Not because I want to rebuild what we had, but because pieces of me are still lying in that wreckage, waiting to be acknowledged. I want to move on, and I want to her to care about me and my life. I want both at the same time.

And although losing the relationship hurt, it isn’t the romantic part that I grieve the most. 

What devastates me is losing the friendship she promised, the family she said we were building and would never get over, the emotional home I thought we shared. She pulls me close only when it’s convenient for her, never out of genuine effort. She doesn’t work to keep a friendship alive. In truth, she doesn’t work on anything—not the friendship, not the aftermath, not the damage left behind. She is superficial on her best days.

She gravitates towards what is easy. In our relationship, I made things easy, so she stayed. Until she didn’t.

And every time I try to bring truth into the conversation, she withdraws—cool, distant, brittle.

Unhealing the Pain

Some mornings, even now, I wake up feeling like the friendship is ending all over again. Reminded she cannot hold space for Switzerland and the US at the same time. I relive that initial shock and grief.

A perfect example:

Our dog was sick. Lethargic and trembling. And caring for him alone—a responsibility she once shared but now lives an ocean away from—was overwhelming. I told her about it, hoping for a small moment of softness. Her response was to say she’d send him prayers and then headed out to dinner. She enjoyed her evening. I shifted my plans. She was surrounded by people; I sat in bed, alone, depressed, holding vigil over our beloved pet. Our version of a child together.

The rejection of him. The rejection of me was too much. She was no more present than a neighbor or the barista at my favorite coffee shop.

As a friend she should have comforted me, supported me. As a co-parent she should have shown more interest and concern. As the person responsible for crushing me to the point I didn’t have the capacity to be a fully present caregiver, she should have had empathy.

I told her to contact a friend for updates because direct communication was too emotionally destabilizing.

She ignored that boundary and texted me directly.

Her disregard hit me harder than anything else that day.

It made me feel disrespected.

Controlled.

Unseen.

Not taken seriously.

Powerless in my own emotional space.

The next morning I called multiple times in an hour and she didn’t answer. When she finally did respond, it was cold, clipped more like obligations than care. No acknowledgment of the sacrifice I had made. No warmth. 

She sent sporadic messages throughout the day while I sat in bed continuously monitoring his breathing, his trembles. She lived her life. Checking in without love when she had a free moment, not when I needed her. A friend should have shown up. A parent should have rearranged her schedule. Before the new girlfriend she would have.

Finally a response. And then—just when the conversation felt almost human—she abruptly said she had to go.

It was emotional whiplash.

The kind that leaves you shaking.

And instantly I found myself back on the path looking for healing. Searching for the place it hurts less because it has never not hurt.

And the truth is, it wasn’t the breakup that broke me. It was the shock that comes with betrayal. My brain and body reacted instantly, shutting down in a way I’d never experienced. It was a trauma response, not a heartbreak. A kind of internal collapse caused not by loss, but by the absence of emotional maturity from someone I trusted. Food was daunting. Sleep was scary. Stability was only a mirage that I could never hold on to.

So I shut the doors.

Blocked her number.

Deleted Instagram.

Deleted WhatsApp.

Removed pathways she uses to drift in and out of my life on her terms.

It wasn’t punishment.

It was survival.

I needed room to breathe.

Contrast Cuts Deep

This is the part that breaks me every time:

I suffer, and she thrives.

I wait, and she lives easily.

I carry the responsibilities, and she carries none.

I sacrifice connection—my only stabilizer—while she stays surrounded by people.

It’s not jealousy.

It’s the contrast.

The violent emotional split between our worlds:

She gets companionship.

I get silence.

She gets comfort.

I get responsibility.

She gets support.

I get the weight.

She gets to enjoy her day.

I get to hold everything she left behind.

That mismatch is what reopens the wound again and again.

Loving an Avoidant

I have learned a lot since trauma entered my life and became part of my personality. I learned about attachment styles and feel short changed that I didn't learn this earlier. I am secure in some ways and anxious in others. She is primarily dismissive avoidant. It is so obvious now.

If I had known, I may have handled things differently. But the outcome would have remained the same because it is her responsibility to identify those shortcomings and to change. To be different. To be better. And not to harm others.

Our dynamic has a pattern—one I can’t unsee anymore:

• When I express a need, she withdraws.

• When I ask for acknowledgement, she avoids.

• When I’m vulnerable, she disappears.

• When she feels comfortable again, she resurfaces in tiny, controlled bursts.

• When I set boundaries, she steps over them.

• When I detach, she reaches out just enough to keep me tethered.

I told her almost two months ago that I couldn’t keep communicating normally until she showed genuine effort to understand the emotional toll everything has taken on me. Not just understand it intellectually—feel it, even a little.

She needs to do the work. And I will know when she has done it. Or at least started it.

So far, nothing has changed.

And I cannot keep repeating the same need only to be ignored.

So I’m stepping back—not out of cruelty, but out of necessity.

The Darkness Looms

And all of this is happening as I enter the darkest stretch of the year—literally and metaphorically.

Our anniversary, Christmas, New Year’s, her birthday, they line up like emotional landmines. Mixed in are the anniversaries of my mom’s and grandpa’s deaths. It’s a long stretch of grief and memory that I usually brace for, but this year it has a sharper edge.

The days shrink. The nights expand. And every date seems to have its own gravity.

These are the days when absence echoes the loudest. When the cold outside mirrors the coldness I receive from her. When the contrast between her life and mine feels most brutal.

This winter feels like a season I’m moving through in the dark with one hand outstretched, trying to steady myself in the unknown.

Searching for Peace

I don’t know how this chapter ends. I don’t know if we will ever have real closure, real honesty, real acknowledgment. I don’t know if our friendship is salvageable. I don’t know if she will ever look at the wreckage with clear eyes.

I do pray that we both heal and that she comes back into my life the way I had envisioned.

With love.

With laughter.

With stories.

With memories.

Each with our own healthy partner who gets our history.

What I know now:

I can’t keep letting her choices dictate the emotional temperature of my life.

I can’t keep bleeding from wounds she refuses to look at.

I can’t keep carrying the consequences alone.

I can’t keep losing myself every time she shows up and disappears in the same breath.

So for now, I’m choosing space.

Not as retaliation.

Not as bitterness.

But because winter asks us to protect what’s fragile.

To conserve warmth.

To hold close the parts of ourselves trying to heal.

I am nervous what the light will look like on the other side of this season. But I hope it finds me.

Until then, I am holding on to what I can and working hard to be my best self.

Not bitter.

Not angry.

Not resentful.

Not vindictive.

I am searching for courage to build a life that finally belongs to me.