Should I text my ex?
There's something in the orange, on going no contact, and - shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed
And if life doesn’t want you to see someone again, you won’t see them again. As is correct, as is exact, as is good.
It’s the 80’s, a man and a woman start dating, they fall in love and then life gets in the way. Maybe they argue too many times, or she hates how he smokes, or he starts to hate the way she laughs - they fall out of love and they break up. Maybe it was just a fling, they were never in love in the first place. Just a few badly matched dates. Anyway, They never see each other again. This is good, this is growth, this is life. I’m jealous of how easy it was for them to end something. To cut someone completely from your life. There are some similarities between my breakups and those from the 80s, like how we both cry to ‘With or Without You’, except I can check their Spotify for new followers and look at their Instagram story to see who they’re with.
It’s 7pm, and I’m on the train home from London after work. It’s one of those days that’s gone too fast and I finished my book too early into the journey so now I’ve just been sat staring out the window for twenty minutes. I’m headed back to my hometown and my friends picking me up from the station.
She’s waiting for me in the car park, flashes her lights at me because she knows I can’t see without my glasses.
“I’ve been single for two months now.” She says proudly.
“How are you finding it?”
“Yeah, it’s been good. I feel so much better for it.” She paused, “He replied to my story so we’ve been speaking a bit over the last few days.” She said this part quieter and kept her eyes on the road.
I don’t say anything for a moment, I mull it over. If I say anything it might come across as condescending - I do anyway. She promises me she’s being careful and that she doesn’t care. That it means nothing.
We’ve all done it, kept the door open when it shouldn’t. Maybe even been the one to knock on theirs.
A previous therapist told me about how we all have these safety behaviours programmed into us from traumas. He had a previous client who was on a bike ride through the countryside when he had his first panic attack in years. He immediately phoned my therapist and asked for an appointment. He explained what had happened and how he was back to square one, that his disorder was back and he needed to go back on medication. Together they traced the panic attack back to when he’d compulsively checked his wallet to see if an old Propranolol pill was still in there. If it was, it would have expired anyway years ago but every so often when he needed comfort he would check it was still sitting there. He’d run his fingers around its outline whenever he felt stressed, comforting himself against its packaging. He’d clearly lost it at some point and not even noticed, but now he could feel its absence it sent him backwards to his grief and he was transported into the eye of his issues again.
After my ex and I broke up, we’d often break no contact to talk again. “We could still be friends”, we’d say even though we both we couldn’t. I’d call him whenever something bad happened and I needed a familiar voice to tell me the same things I used to hear daily. Nearly all of it was unhelpful. I saw this and thought of you, we’d say. He was my comfort, but every time we did speak it would send me back to the beginning without me even noticing.
Not just the big exes either, we’re trapped into staying in low-effort communication with everyone from our past. Even just someone you went on a few dates with stays permanently on your social media watching our lives silently. In fact in order to remove someone it takes consistent effort - to unfollow, to remove, to block. Blocking phone numbers, Instagram stories of mutual friends, TikTok friend suggestions, your Mother’s mouth, there are remnants of them everywhere. It can almost feel too dramatic a decision to remove someone when nothing that bad even happened between you.
Sometimes I think we imprison people into our lives through our phones long after they were meant to leave. Keeping them hostage as mutuals in order to never admit things are truly over, and that one day you will see them for the last time. This is good, and this is right. Let people be experiences, not possessions. Let the dead stay in the past, gut your life out and make way for new people to come in. We cling to these old comforts because it feels safe, but every time we do it’s three steps backwards.
And the modern day hasn’t changed everything, I will still think about people from the past when someone wears the same perfume or I see something they’d like at a restaurant. But I don’t reach out. I let the wave of the memory wash over me and I let myself stay where I belong in the present.
“I hope you live a long and happy life, and I hope I never have to hear anything about it.”
Last summer I saw an ex in Battersea Park after not seeing him for six months:
“How is everything? How’s work?” He said and we had a meaningless conversation for a moment as if I didn’t love him at one point.
“Did you remove me from everything?” He said loudly after a moment of silence, and in turn, I met his eyes for the first time in a long time.
“Trust me, it’s a compliment,” I said back, and he looked like he didn’t understand but I don’t think he ever did understand me anyway. He told me he was proud of me but I don’t think he knew what for.
I’d kept his number in my contacts just in case. Just in case what? In case he changed his mind? In case he changed mine? I don’t know why I did it anymore. The thing is you know it’s doomed, you know how this ends because you finished the last chapter already. I think humans often crave familiarity even when they know it ends in pain.
“I’ll still think about you on your birthday but I’d cut my own hand off before I reach out again.”
I deleted his number and I got back on the train home.
-Shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.