Is it bad to still be in love with your ex?
She introduces him to her parents. It is the first time she has ever done this. The certainty feels like something she can rest her full weight on.
Three years later she is on the floor of her apartment, heaving. Her sisters text hourly. Her friends cook most of her meals. It takes her hours to finish half a banana.
The gap between those two moments is what breaks people.
We build futures out of certainty. Not hope—certainty. We introduce them to our extended family. We name the child we have not had yet. We call each other “mine” and mean it as an answer to a question no one has asked. Then the architecture collapses and we are left holding blueprints for a house that was never going to get built.
The rage comes later. Not at the loss. At the evidence. The videos where her face looks so happy it makes her sad now. She mourns the child they named together more than she mourns him.
Six months before the end he tells her he is not sure anymore. She puts the relationship on a ventilator. When she finally breaks up with him, she hopes the decision will scare him into fighting. He cries. He has already checked out.
Two months later he is with someone else.
The question is not whether it is bad to still be in love with an ex. The question is what we do with all the certainty we built. Do we take it apart brick by brick, or do we let it stand there, unoccupied, a monument to something we were sure of once?
What are we supposed to do with the fact that no one will ever know how much we tried?
The hardest part is replaying every word and gesture, trying to see what we could not see before. She looked so happy. That is what breaks us.
Being certain about someone is not the same as being right about them. We can be certain and still end up on the floor, lungs drowning, coughing it all up just to stand upright again. The certainty does not protect us. It just makes the fall longer.
She says no one will love him as much as she did. She means it not out of spite but as a fact. Maybe that is true. Or maybe the truth is simpler and worse: maybe we carry love long after it has nowhere left to go, and call it certainty when it is just the habit of a heart that has not learned to let go yet.
The architecture is still standing. Just empty now.
Sit with it:
What are you certain of right now that you were just as certain about once before?
If you could take apart one memory and see it clearly, which one would you choose?
What does it mean to love someone more than they loved you, and what does it cost to keep knowing that?