I tried to heal while staying in touch with him.
Spoiler: I did not heal.
I told myself we could be mature, that I could totally handle “just being friends.” In reality, it was emotional CrossFit, every text felt like lifting a hundred pounds of unresolved tension. He’d text “how are you?” and I’d spend three hours trying to decode the punctuation like it was the Da Vinci Code of mixed signals. Healing? I was regressing. My screen time was giving trauma.
The illusion of progress
Every time I said, “I’m over it,” I meant, “I’ve just been distracted for 36 hours.” I’d delete our chats for the fifteenth time like it was a cleansing ritual, only to re-download them from iCloud a week later because I missed closure. Closure, by the way, is the biggest scam. It’s the emotional version of “one more episode.” You think you’ll stop after this last conversation, but it’s never the last one. The truth is, you can’t heal in the same room that broke you. And by “room,” I mean their presence, their voice, their Instagram Stories. You can’t detox while you’re still taking microdoses of the poison.
The relapse cycle (and other bad ideas)
I once convinced myself I could “see him one last time for closure.” We ended up at my place, eating pizza, and talking like nothing happened. We tell ourselves we’re strong enough to stay in contact, but healing doesn’t happen in the same space where you kept breaking. You can’t rebuild your self-worth with the same person who taught you to question it. It’s like trying to recover from caffeine addiction inside a coffee shop. You might think you’re fine, but the smell alone will wreck your progress.
Silence as medicine
When I finally went no contact, it felt like quitting a bad habit cold turkey. The first week, I kept reaching for my phone like a phantom limb. The second week, I started remembering who I was before every conversation turned into emotional calculus. And then something wild happened, peace started to feel normal again. My days stopped orbiting around a person who couldn’t decide if they wanted me or validation. Silence became medicine. No texts to decode. No waiting for proof that I mattered. Just me, my journal, and the blessed relief of not explaining myself anymore.
The comeback
By month two, I realized I was actually funny again. Like, full-volume-laugh funny, not the brittle “haha” I used to text while dying inside. My appetite came back. My playlists got lighter. My space, physical and emotional, stopped reminding me of him. Healing didn’t look glamorous. It looked like blocked numbers, long showers, new bedsheets, and slowly falling in love with my own life again. And when he eventually texted “hey stranger,” I didn’t even flinch. Because once you’ve built peace from scratch, chaos isn’t tempting anymore, it’s tacky.
The moral of the story
You can’t heal in the same room that broke you. Sometimes you have to walk out, shut the door, and redecorate your peace from the ground up. Healing requires distance, not punishment, not revenge, just silence long enough for your nervous system to remember safety. And one day, you’ll realize you’re not healing from them anymore. You’re healing into you.
Journaling prompts: the art of leaving the room
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Where do I still go looking for closure I’ll never get?
Name the habits, texts, or memories you revisit, and ask what they’re actually giving you. -
What does peace feel like when no one else is defining it for me?
Write about that feeling until it becomes familiar. -
Who am I without the constant emotional noise?
Get to know the version of you that doesn’t live in response mode. -
What’s the hardest part about walking away, and what’s the cost of staying?
Sit with that trade-off. It says everything. -
If healing had a room of its own, what would it look like?
Describe it in detail. Then go build it, one boundary at a time.