It’s My Third Day Without You And I Am Learning Why Letting Go Takes So Much Time

I skimmed my phone in search of that message. No result.

I checked my voicemail only to hear the echo of my own voice notifying me of its emptiness.

I felt so much like my voicemail. Empty.

Never have I thought one person could carry such a massive impact on my well-being.

I haven’t left the house in three days. I couldn’t find a point in leaving the house after you’ve left.

For the last three days, every single morning I woke up with a visceral feeling flooding through my body as my chest wrapped itself around my heart suffocating what you have left of it.

My friend once told me about depression, and it felt so unreal at that time. Symptoms of depression sounded like science fiction until I became the main character and the setting was the four walls surrounding me.

I didn’t think much of you, to be honest. I thought more about me. I shred my personality into slices and scrutinized every single aspect trying to figure out where I went wrong. To me, at that moment, it was clear that I was the dilemma. It was clear that I wasn’t enough and that my presence in your life was a mere passage of time until you’ve found your one. I thought it’s my appearance first. Then I decided it was probably my loud laugh. I finalized my analysis realizing it was probably something in my personality.

My body couldn’t adjust to the hectic flow of events. One day we were promising each other an eternity under the shooting stars and the world felt at peace and my heart for once felt secure, the next day I’m left in an empty bed without being offered the explanation I deserved.

And I realized that’s why letting go takes so much time, because when you lose what you’ve been holding on to for so long, or what you’ve got psychologically used to, your mind focuses all its energy on the act of loss, overthinking the situations.

It’s like one day this person was occupying most of your thinking, and the next day that person is gone, and you’re asking your mind to simply delete the presence of this person in a blink, but that’s not the way things work.

You can’t simply remove the person you’ve had so many memories with from your mind in one day, and that’s why letting go is this exhausting.

But to my own surprise, three days have passed since that morning, and my heart is still beating. A little unsteady, mixed up with some anxiety, insomnia, and an abhorrence for food, but it’s still beating after I’ve bet that it won’t survive another night alone.

The clock hit four, and you haven’t opened the door. You’ve probably returned from work now and rested in a different apartment. My mind went to who’s listening now to how your day went.

And then I decided I better not think about that.

I tried to sink my sadness in the bathtub, but I couldn’t even walk to the tub. The world felt heavy and my own feet betrayed me.

Instead, I decided to reach for the closest thing around me, and turn my TV. My third day was coming to an end, and the eyesight felt a little better after I’ve grown tired of crying, and for the first time today I felt something other than heaviness and rage.

I laughed a little at the host’s joke. I forgot you for a moment. I forgot to remember you and the way you’ve left me.

And I wanted that moment to last forever. And I knew that one day this moment of bliss will be how I’ll feel the entire day, but today, on my third day without you, happiness is just hidden in the breaks between my sobs, and the only thing my heart aches for is sadly still you.