How To Find Closure When You’ve Been Left On ‘Read’

You will be left on “read.” You will be left like a ship on the sea, billowing among the waves. You will be left for others. You will be left unexpectedly. You will be left at twilight with the ghost of potential lingering at the traces of where their car was once parked. You will be left in your teens, twenties, thirties, yearly, monthly, daily. You will be left with apologies, with sighs, and sometimes, if you are lucky, with explanations. And you will be left to grieve broken promises and to throw away everything that smelled like them. You will be left more often than you ever imagined. 

Yet regardless of how much you try to pretend that there are always more than two answers—love me or love me not—sometimes there is no gray area. Standing at the precipice of who you two once were, you will have to make a choice in the wake of their departure—to either stay, buoyantly waiting for their return, or to pack away your memories into a safety deposit box, edging your way out too. 

I am not going to romanticize one over the other. Both will feel like an insurgence blushing on the horizon. You will have qualms. You will second guess yourself. You will want to turn back time. But the question is: Who will you revolt against? Will you revolt against logic, the thing that kept you afloat for so long, that gave you answers when all you fed it was lies, that kept you fed, clothed and upright?

Or will you revolt against emotion, the thing that made every step into a fleeting tomorrow more riveting, that pirouetted with souls rather than bodies, that wasn’t fazed by the improbable odds? 

There is no right answer, but you’re going to have to choose one sooner than you’d hoped. I lied. You already did because the moment I said you will be left, you knew who would. You knew how much they meant—how much you could endure for them and how much you could endure for you. I did too. I choose to find closure within that “read.”