I received the text that toppled my world in the early hours of August 28th, 2025. Wrapped in a blanket and clutching the bear he’d bought me, I read the unwelcome words over and over again.
My Love: I don’t think this is going to work.
In shock, still a little drunk from the party I just attended, and feeling the 4am fog, I didn’t cry or scream or call my mum for comfort, I just lay there. In the dark. Reading the text I’d hoped to never get over and over and over again. As the grey bubble became a blur and sleep neared, I muttered 6 words into the night that still remain untrue.
Everything is going to be okay.
Now, I find myself haunted by hindsight. It’s not the message that continues to burn, it’s how quickly I accepted the white hot words. No bargaining. No protest. Just stillness, like my body saw something my heart was blind to. I didn’t let myself feel rage, sadness, or grief. I just lay there, my only company the pale glow of my phone screen and the lingering scent of his cologne.
It’s been 135 days since my break up and it feels like it happened yesterday. To say the wound feels fresh would be a gross understatement—it feels like the knife is still buried in my heart, shoved up to the hilt and happy to stay. Logically, I know the blood will soon clot and the ache will eventually dull, but right now, I fear I’ll never be okay again.
135 days between now and then, but my heartbreak can’t count. It still measures time in the curve of his smile, the shadow on the left side of my bed, and the photos I can’t quite bring myself to delete. Time moves on without a lick of consideration for me. It doesn’t look back. But I do, over and over and over again.
But everything happens for a reason.
The phrase follows me around like a bad smell. Friends offer it gently. Strangers wield it like a weapon of wisdom. But no one knows what to do when the reason doesn’t reveal itself—when all you’re left with is rubble, smoke, and a vague promise that one day it’ll make sense. As if heartbreak has a how-to guide. As if loss is only valid when it comes with a lesson.
The loopy script on my upper thigh is a constant reminder of such. It screams at me, so I pull on a pair of jeans everyday to mute the black ink. I loathe my tattoo. Both because of the truth it tells and that my 18-year-old self couldn’t see this coming. The phrase isn’t a comfort anymore, it’s a sign that I devoted two years of my life to something that was never a forever. Why can’t it just be a pretty scar?
One day, the phrase may soften. It may stop feeling like a lie I chant into the night to quell my pain. The tattoo might just become another tattoo; just ink, just skin. But for now, it still stings, etched into my body and asking for belief at a time when belief feels costly. I don’t know if everything is going to be okay. So I wake up, pull on a pair of jeans, and carry on anyway. Over and over and over again.
