UnlearningSilence.blog

Another long one from me. I have struggled to write lately, but tonight I heard someone say something that made me think: “When a good person is in love with you, their biggest fear is losing you. When a good person is truly in love with you, their biggest fear is hurting you.” Perhaps that is too simple. You can fear both. You can love someone deeply and still hurt them. But it got me thinking, and for the first time in a while, I wanted to write.

“Are you running away from being loved?” Sometimes it has been a question; other times, a certainty: “You are running away from being truly loved.” I have heard that so many times. But what does “truly” mean? Does the strength of someone’s feelings settle the question? Does their certainty mean I should distrust my own experience? I want to understand whether I am frightened of closeness or recognising that something is wrong for me. I do not always know immediately, but I want room to find out without having my feelings explained away.

It made me wonder how often, when we say we are afraid of losing someone, we are thinking about what their absence would do to us: the space they would leave, the routines that would disappear, the future we had begun to imagine. There is another question, though: what is being with us doing to them? That is harder to ask. It requires us to look beyond our intentions and consider our impact, including our words, our silences and the way we react when we are frightened. We may feel certain of our love while overlooking how difficult it has become for another person to receive it.

Sometimes we misunderstand, become defensive or withdraw when we most need to speak. We try so hard to feel secure that the person we love begins to feel constrained. None of this necessarily means that the love was false. It means that love alone cannot do all the work. I recognise something of myself in that: the impulse to explain what I meant before fully listening to how it felt, the temptation to treat my own hurt as the most urgent thing in the room. Good intentions offer such a reassuring account of ourselves, but another person has to live with our behaviour, not just our intentions.

We all bring a history into our relationships. We learn things about closeness long before we know we are learning them: whether affection is dependable, whether disagreement means abandonment, whether asking for something makes us difficult. Years later, we can find ourselves responding to the person in front of us as though they were someone from much earlier in our lives. Understanding that history matters. So does taking responsibility for what we do with it. An explanation can help us change; it cannot repair the hurt by itself.

Sometimes I wonder whether I have given someone the value of the potential I could see in them, rather than seeing clearly who they were at that moment. I could imagine what we might become, and perhaps I loved that possibility too. But seeing someone’s potential does not mean they can reach it, or that they want the life I have imagined for them. Perhaps I could not become everything they hoped for either, to be honest. Maybe part of this journey is learning to see both of us more clearly, without asking either person to live up to an imagined version of themselves.

Sometimes, even with love still present, a relationship has to end. I used to think letting go must involve a certain clarity: you would reach a point where the decision became obvious, and your feelings would eventually fall into line. But you can understand why you need to leave and still want, desperately, to stay. You can want someone to be happy and wish their happiness included you. You can know that holding on is hurting you both and still reach for your phone. The decision may be necessary without feeling clean or generous or brave.

Sometimes you leave because you can no longer bear the person you are becoming in your effort to keep someone. You notice how much of your day has become waiting, interpreting and anticipating. You want reassurance, then need reassurance about the reassurance. You begin to miss yourself even while the other person is still there. There is something painful and honest in saying, “I love you, but I don’t want to become someone I don’t like in the process of trying to keep you.”

Still, I want to understand myself well enough to ask difficult questions. Is something happening that I cannot accept? Am I frightened of closeness? Are we misunderstanding each other, or asking for things the other cannot give? I trust my feelings, but I also want to understand what they are telling me. Pain does not automatically mean there is no love. It does mean something needs attention, and calling the love “true” cannot make that need disappear. I want a love in which I can speak about what hurts and be heard.

I will not always get that distinction right. I may leave when I could have stayed, or stay longer than I should. I do not have an obligation to understand everything perfectly before taking the next step. I am learning, and that is the aim: to become more honest with myself, more responsible for my choices and more able to recognise the love I want to give and receive.

None of this makes the grief easier. You might be sitting on a train when a stranger’s arm brushes against yours and you instinctively flinch. For a fleeting moment, your body expects his touch; then you realise it belongs to someone else. Your mind knows the relationship has ended, but your body is still adjusting to his absence. Or something happens that you would once have told him immediately, and you still compose the message in your head. You have ended a relationship, but your everyday life is still full of small gestures towards it.

Since when did loving fully become something to be ashamed of? Our generation grew up on songs about love that was true, sacred and worth crossing a thousand miles for. Yet when that love ends, we seem to expect ourselves to recover immediately, as though missing someone means we have lost our dignity or made the wrong decision. Why should we have to hurry past something that mattered so much?

Why do emotional, sincere people so often feel judged for showing that they care? Have we become so concerned with appearing unbothered that we treat tenderness as an embarrassment? Our emotions are part of who we are, and there should be room to express them with care and honesty. Loving someone, missing them and grieving their absence should not leave us feeling as though we have done something wrong.

Sometimes I wonder how much of this comes from the values we have absorbed. A culture shaped by capitalism and neoliberal ideas can make everything feel like a competition: keep improving, stay productive, protect your advantage. Even warmth can become a performance, something useful for getting ahead rather than a sincere expression of care. Add a Machiavellian attitude to that, and people become obstacles or opportunities. Feelings become inconvenient. We learn to appear warm while staying ready to discard whatever slows our progress.

But what the hell is success? For me, it includes becoming my most authentic self. I want to build a life, meet my responsibilities and achieve things, but I also want to remain capable of tenderness. There is something in the socialist emphasis on solidarity and our responsibility towards one another that appeals to me: the recognition that other people matter beyond what they can offer us. I do not think any political system has all the answers, but I want a balance that leaves room for ambition, care and an emotional life.

During the day, we are still mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, bosses, managers and supervisors. We show up, meet our responsibilities and carry on, even when we are hurting. Let the evenings and nights belong to us sometimes. Let us feel without having to explain or defend it. We are not bothering anyone by listening to a song or admitting to ourselves that we miss someone. We are built to feel. Why should we deny that part of ourselves?

Why can’t we simply say, “Yes, I loved this person. I let go, and I still believe I needed to. But right now I am hurting, and I miss them. I’ll be fine. It just won’t happen overnight”? We can grieve without regretting our decision and remember the tenderness without forgetting why we left. We are human, not robots. I, for one, refuse to act as though I can switch off my feelings the moment I decide to leave. Being honest about what I feel, while staying true to my decision, is my way of being my most authentic self.

You can be a lawyer whom people respect and still spend an evening listening to a song that makes you wonder whether someone still thinks of you. You can be capable, dependable and serious about your work, and still feel every word. I do not think those parts of us contradict each other. Being a lawyer does not make me less human, and I do not want professional composure to become a demand that I feel nothing at all.

What matters is what I do with the feeling. Whatever our profession, we can let a song move us without sending the message, making the call or reopening something we have chosen to leave. For me, it is better to give the feeling some space, let it settle and return to my life. I can wonder whether he thinks of me without needing to find out.

There is so much language now about moving on, knowing our worth and protecting our peace. Some of it is useful, but it can make grief feel like a failure to follow instructions. You do not have to forget what was beautiful to acknowledge what hurt. Missing someone does not oblige you to return, and acknowledging your love does not mean you have abandoned yourself.

I do not believe that replacing someone is the best way forward, either. I understand the defiance in Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable, but it does not quite speak to how I feel. When I have loved someone sincerely, I cannot simply regard them as interchangeable. Another person’s attention does not erase what they meant to me, and closeness with someone else can still feel unfamiliar. I need time to adjust, rather than asking somebody new to fill the space.

For me, the song is Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles. The piano begins, and I feel the pull of it: the movement, the longing, the hope that enough effort could somehow close the distance. I remember the person I was when I would still have gone all that way. But now, when I listen, I ask myself where I am going. Who am I hoping to find when I get there?

I have been listening to it on repeat in the evenings and when I cycle. Nobody knows, and I am not tired of it yet. Perhaps the usual advice would tell me to change the song, stop dwelling and move on. But it helps me feel, and I can listen while still getting on with my life. I am going to keep listening without making myself feel bad about it, until one day I no longer want to. Until I get on my bicycle, reach for my music and choose another song because that is what I feel like hearing.

The house was quiet. My mum was asleep, my son was asleep, and my cat probably was too. I went out barefoot and took my bicycle into the London night. Away from the road, with nobody around and the song on repeat, I rose out of the saddle and began to pedal faster. I could feel the pedals beneath my feet, the effort in my legs and the air against my face. The music kept moving, and so did I.

I kept going for a long time. Each time the song began again, I let myself feel another little part of what I had been carrying. I missed him. I felt sad. Then, for a moment, I was simply there, moving through the night, looking up at the sky and passing beneath the trees. My bicycle, the song and me. I felt free, almost as though I were flying, and I did not have to explain that feeling to anyone.

Somewhere along the ride, I began to change the destination in my mind. I thought about the attention I had given him, the patience I had found for him, the effort I had been willing to make to understand him. Could I offer some of that to myself? Could I listen to what I needed without dismissing it? Could I look honestly at my mistakes without deciding they were all I was? Could I see the person doing all this pedalling, instead of only the person she missed?

When I came home, everyone was still asleep. Nobody knew about the ride, the music or everything I had felt. In the morning, I would return to my responsibilities, but that part of the night had belonged to me. I still missed him. Yet I felt better, and I had kept my promise to myself. I had let the feelings out without allowing them to take me back.

Ride a bike, for fuck’s sake. Listen to your favourite songs. Give yourself a little time to feel what you have been carrying, then come home and carry on with your life. No one needs to know unless you want to tell them. Find a way to let your emotions out, privately, in a way that helps you stay true to yourself. For me, physical exercise is one of the best ways to do that. The movement gives my restlessness somewhere to go.

Give yourself time to think and feel, but set some boundaries around it. Keep showing up for your responsibilities, making plans and building your life. That evening bicycle ride gives my grief a little space; afterwards, I come home and return to the rest of my life. I can honour what I felt without giving it every hour of my day.

In those private moments, I also begin to notice what, exactly, I am longing for. Him as he was? The beginning? The future I imagined? The version of myself who still believed it would work? Those are different losses, and it takes time to recognise them. Sometimes I miss the person; sometimes I miss a possibility I had not yet learned to let go of.

The love was inside me, after all, in my heart. The relationship has ended, but I need time to understand what remains and let it change. If an immediate break in contact helps you, I understand that. But cutting off contact and recovering emotionally are different things. For me, moving on means going through the grief, rather than finding ways around it. I want to find my way forward without making another person responsible for helping me forget.

Meanwhile, life continues in small ways. I answer a message from a friend, make a plan without wondering whether it fits around someone else, or enjoy an afternoon and realise afterwards that I had not been thinking about him. Then another day catches me unexpectedly, and I miss him again. I do not think that cancels the progress. It is simply how slowly a life changes shape.

There are things I hope to carry forward from loving someone, even when I cannot carry the relationship forward: a greater willingness to listen, a little less urgency to defend myself, the ability to ask for what I need without making another person responsible for all my fear. I hope to recognise sooner when I am beginning to disappear into the effort of keeping someone close. That is unfinished work, but there is hope in being able to look at a pattern and say, “I understand where this came from. I want to respond differently.”

Perhaps that is why the song feels different to me now. I used to hear it as a journey towards someone else, a distance I might cross if I loved enough, wanted enough, kept going. Now I let the feeling turn towards me. Come to me, I think. Give me some of that care. Take the time to understand me. I am here too, with my tenderness, my mistakes, my responsibilities and the life I am still trying to build.

I would walk a thousand miles if, at the end of them, I could truly see myself. Not only through his eyes, or through the relationship and its ending, but as a whole person whose life still deserves my attention. Perhaps that is the game I play when the song comes on: each time it carries me towards him, I gently change the destination. I turn some of that love towards the person I am still learning to understand.

The feeling is still there, and I am learning to carry it as I move forward. I will admit it: I am looking for true, sincere love. I want to love fully and feel able to stay, rather than find myself wanting to run away from a relationship, as I have done before. I am convinced that, for me, finding that love begins with knowing myself more honestly: what I need, what I fear, what I bring to another person’s life and what makes me feel most like myself.

That is the journey I want to take. I want to understand when leaving is right for me and when the urge to run comes from something I have yet to face. I want to recognise a love I can stay in without losing myself, and to offer that person the same freedom to be who they are. I do not know how far away that is, but I am willing to walk a thousand miles to get there. To truly see myself. To come home to my authentic self and, from there, meet someone with an open heart.