UnlearningSilence.blog

This morning, I went for a walk.

London appears to have forgotten that it is London. At thirty-seven degrees, it feels more like southern Europe than East London, and I have realised that my wardrobe is far better prepared for drizzle than for sunshine. I had bought a fan the day before, was enjoying working from home and wanted to stretch my legs.

Yesterday, I had written about my broken bicycle and how sometimes we spend too long asking whether we should keep repairing things that are no longer taking us where we need to go. So, instead of cycling, I decided to walk.

As I walked towards the High Street, I passed a pub. I didn’t notice him at first. Then I heard my name and turned around to see him crossing the road towards me.

He asked me to join him for a drink. I said no. He said it was nice to see me, and I told him it was nice to see him too. He then asked whether I didn’t want to speak to him again. I said yes, turned around and carried on walking. We both walked away.

And that was it.

Six months ago, I don’t think I could have imagined that those four words, “And that was it”, would one day feel so true.

Letting go of that relationship was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Not because we were right for each other. We weren’t. Deep down, I always knew we were incompatible. We wanted different things from life, communicated differently and brought out more anxiety than peace in one another. Yet I still struggled to let go.

Love is not always what keeps us holding on. Sometimes it is familiarity. Sometimes it is attachment. Sometimes it is guilt. Sometimes it is the hope that if we could just explain ourselves one more time, understand each other a little better or try a little harder, everything might somehow become what we wished it had been all along.

For months, I questioned myself. I replayed conversations in my head. I tried to understand his behaviour. I tried to understand mine… I wondered whether I had been unfair or whether I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Looking back, I realise that I wasn’t only grieving the relationship. I was grieving the future I had imagined.

There were days when letting go felt impossible. Not because I wanted to go back, but because I couldn’t imagine what life would feel like without him occupying so much of my mind.

So I stopped trying to force myself to move on. Instead, I simply kept living. I travelled with friends even when I didn’t feel like going. I cycled through London. I focused on my work and my boys. None of those things magically healed me. They simply gave my mind somewhere else to go. Looking back now, I think that was enough. Healing didn’t arrive all at once. It quietly found me while I was busy living my life.

When I got home, I called a friend and told her about the encounter. She said something I hadn’t thought about before.

“This conversation feels different. Six months ago, I would have worried about you. Today, I don’t.”

At first, I replied that I hadn’t felt anything when I saw him.

That wasn’t entirely true.

I noticed that he had lost weight. I noticed his voice. I noticed that he felt like a stranger.

The difference was not that I felt nothing. The difference was that I no longer felt pulled towards him. I no longer felt any guilt either.

Perhaps that is what moving on really looks like. It isn’t forgetting someone or pretending they never mattered. It is realising that they no longer occupy the space they once did because you have reclaimed it for yourself.

As I carried on with my walk through the London heat, I realised that I hadn’t just run into my ex. I had finally run into the calmer, more peaceful version of myself, who had quietly found her way home.

As I was writing this, Toast by Koffee was playing quietly in the background. I hadn’t chosen it because I was writing about this encounter. It simply happened to become the soundtrack to the afternoon.

As the essay came to an end, I realised that the song and the story shared something important. They are both, in their own way, about gratitude.

For a long time, I thought moving on meant forgetting, or reaching a point where the past no longer mattered. I don’t think that anymore.

Today, I feel grateful.

Grateful that our paths crossed when they did. Grateful for the happiness we shared, however brief. Grateful for the difficult moments that forced me to ask questions I had never asked myself before. Grateful for everything I learnt about love, loss, boundaries, forgiveness and, perhaps most importantly, about myself.

Without that chapter, I might never have travelled as much as I did. I might never have discovered how much peace there is in simply living my own life, one ordinary day at a time.

Our journeys continue now, separately, as they should. I genuinely hope they are both good ones.

Some people walk beside us for a lifetime. Others accompany us for only a small part of the journey, leaving us changed in ways we could never have imagined.

Today, gratitude feels bigger than regret. Bigger than guilt. Bigger than the wish that things had turned out differently.

It simply feels like the right place to leave this chapter. And, as Koffee says in the song, “…mi gwaan wid di road…”