The Echoes of a Choice

 

Abby and I were caught in the uncertain space between breaking up and holding on—neither fully apart nor truly together. The reconciliation was provisional, tentative, a fragile attempt to salvage something that had already begun to fray. In those weeks apart, I met someone new. Someone who looked at me like I was desirable, wanted, needed. And in my loneliness, that feeling was intoxicating.

I wasn’t used to that kind of attention, the kind that fills an emptiness when heartbreak carves you hollow. So I leaned into it. I let myself be wanted, let the comfort of fleeting intimacy dull the ache. We spent the night together, then the morning, each moment carrying an unspoken understanding—that this wasn’t meant to last.

By the time afternoon came, reality was setting in. I knew I had to step away, to end it before it became something more tangled. I was preparing to tell her it couldn’t happen again when Abby’s message arrived—breaking things off for good.

Relief should have come with it, perhaps even closure, but instead, I was left with an ache I couldn’t shake. The truth settled in: I had used someone else as a salve for my pain, treating their desire as a temporary cure for my own sadness. And even now, ten years later, the thought lingers—the regret, the guilt, the weight of a decision made in loneliness.

I’ve learned since then that healing isn’t found in distraction, nor in the embrace of someone new. It’s in facing what hurt us, understanding the choices we made, and forgiving ourselves—not to erase the past, but to live beyond it.