This Is What Breaking Up Slowly Looks Like

It wasn’t like ripping off a band aid and just getting over it. Our breakup was a long and slow process. It was more hurtful than a sudden one. It started with losing feelings for each other little by little, and every time we lost some of these feelings, it hurt a bit more. It started with replying less to texts and talking less. It began by us craving each other less over time. It was us slowly losing trust and interest in one another. It was about us starting to disappear slowly from each other’s lives. It was about noticing each other less than before. It was about growing apart little by little and seeing the distance between us expand every day.

It was about us slowly fading away from each other’s lives and not even missing one another. It was about not noticing each other’s absence anymore. It was about us not occupying each other’s thoughts or minds any longer. It was about the absence of arguments, fights, and even debates because we lost that heat—we lost that feeling of having something to fight for.

We kept losing each other little by little, and it used to hurt, but then it kept hurting less till there was no pain at all because we wasted it all on the small ways we were separating from each other without even realizing. Our breakup wasn’t us yelling at each other or blaming one another. It wasn’t one of those catastrophic, heartbreaking breakups; it was more like a cold emotionless one, because it was an inevitable thing—we both knew very well that we had reached a point where we had to leave each other, even though we had already left each other in other ways. We just had to make it official by saying it out loud.

We turned from two people who were extremely in love to two people who became totally numb towards each other. We became more like a habit for one another. And being a habit in someone’s life is never enough of a reason to keep staying in a relationship with them.