For a long time, loss did not feel like an ending. It felt provisional, temporary, as if life itself were holding its breath with me. I carried the quiet conviction that what had been interrupted could still be resumed — that there was an earlier version of the world waiting patiently for my return, unchanged, intact. I moved through days as though rehearsing, not living, convinced that at some point the doors would reopen and I would simply step back into the life I had imagined continuing.

That illusion was difficult to surrender because it was gentle. It did not scream or collapse dramatically; it lingered. It asked very little of me except patience. And so I waited. I walked streets whose pavements remembered our conversations. I crossed intersections where I had once pictured our shadows overlapping. The city became a museum of anticipated moments, and I behaved like a devoted visitor, preserving what was never fully real.

What finally dissolved the illusion was not a single event, but exhaustion. The fatigue of waiting without being met. The dull ache of directing energy towards someone who stood still, not out of certainty but fear. I began to see how much colour had drained from my days — not because the world had dimmed, but because I had narrowed my gaze to a single, unresponsive point.

Letting go was not heroic. It was quiet and almost accidental. One day I stopped imagining explanations. Another day I stopped checking. Then, without ceremony, I stopped arranging my life around a possibility that refused to choose me.

The streets changed after that. Or perhaps I did. The same routes began to show details I had overlooked: the uneven rhythm of footsteps at rush hour, the sudden brightness of shop windows at night, the way the city breathes differently when you are no longer waiting for someone to arrive beside you. I had to relearn colour — not as nostalgia, but as presence. What once felt washed out by expectation regained texture once I released the future I had been postponing myself for.

I started listening to new music, not because I needed novelty, but because my ears were finally open. Sounds no longer had to compete with imagined conversations. I walked unfamiliar streets without assigning them symbolic weight. Cafés were just cafés. Parks were simply places to sit and exist. There was relief in this ordinariness, in allowing spaces to belong to themselves again.

I finally ended that wait that arose purely from my hope of seeing you. Now I hope I never run into you again, because I have finally accepted that all our business is finished. I don’t want to see you. Not in the square, not on the street, not at the market. I no longer waste my time dreaming of meeting your gaze among the lights of dusk.

I realised how deeply being ignored had shaped my perception. How the absence of response had trained me to doubt my own vividness. Now, without that constant background noise of waiting, things appeared sharper. Light reflected differently. Words landed more clearly. I did not feel louder or more urgent — only more real.

Melancholy remains, but it has changed its posture. It no longer pulls me backwards; it stands beside me, observant, almost companionable. It reminds me of what I once hoped for, without demanding that I rebuild it. The past is no longer a destination. It is a reference point, useful only insofar as it clarifies what I will not repeat.

I am beginning again, not dramatically, not triumphantly, but honestly. I walk forward without rehearsing reunions that will never happen. I make room for memories that have not yet been lived. And in this unclaimed space — free of expectation, free of silence imposed by another — I feel something steady and unmistakable.

Not the joy of return, but the quieter happiness of arrival.

We take a chance from time to time
And put our necks out on the line
And you have broken every promise that we made
And I have loved you anyway

Took a fine time to leave me hangin' out to dry
Understand now I'm grieving
So don't you waste my time
Cause you have taken
All the wind out from my sails
And I have loved you just the same

We finally find this
Then you're gone
Been chasing rainbows all along
And you have cursed me
When there's no one left to blame
And I have loved you just the same
And you have broken every single fucking rule
And I have loved you like a fool