When We Stopped Talking
We stopped talking somewhere between winter and spring. I can’t pin down when—there’s no moment you can point to. It was gradual, the way things rot. We used to be the kind of people who’d stay up all night doing nothing in particular, your head against my shoulder, cheap wine going warm in our glasses. We had this thing where the world made sense because we had each other, or at least that’s how it felt. Everything outside the two of us seemed small.
But something shifts. You notice it first as a silence that isn’t comfortable anymore. Then you realize you’re not looking at each other the same way. The jokes land different. You catch yourself thinking about what to say before you say it, which means you’ve stopped talking without thinking. The distance isn’t something that happens at the end—it’s what the end looks like when you finally look at it.
I don’t believe in the idea that people drift apart because nobody’s paying attention or because life gets in the way. That’s what we tell ourselves. The truth is meaner: you can watch it happen and not do anything about it. You can see the person you loved turning into someone you don’t quite know, and you just let it happen. Because fighting it would mean admitting it’s real.
By the time we actually said anything, there was nothing left to say. We split up things that belonged to both of us. I took the photos and some other stuff I probably shouldn’t have. You took the rest. I remember thinking I should feel worse than I did. Like there should be some proportional sadness to match what we’d had. But mostly I just felt tired.
The weird thing is I don’t regret it. The time we had was real—I can still remember how that felt, how you felt. I can look back and know that part was true. It’s just not anymore. And yeah, that sucks. But it sucks cleanly, if that makes sense. Not the way it sucks when you’re pretending something’s still there and it isn’t.
I think about you sometimes and it doesn’t hurt the way it used to. It’s more like remembering a song you used to love but haven’t heard in years. You’d recognize it if it came on, but you’re not looking for it. We might run into each other someday. We might be different enough that we can be okay in the same room. Or we might not. Either way, what we had is finished.