I Didn’t Check the Old Messages

Dear Delyara, The urge came exactly when it always comes — late, lonely, tired, after a thin-feeling evening, after wanting contact without wanting the work of actual conversation. That old reflex toward familiar pain disguised as memory. I knew what would happen if I opened them. First the softness. Then the ache. Then the comparison. Then that hollow sick feeling of returning to a version of my life I cannot actually live in anymore. This time I didn’t. I let the loneliness stay loneliness instead of feeding it old tenderness turned sharp. That felt like a real kind of recovery. Not relief. Self-protection.