I’ve been waiting for that familiar ringtone to sound again.
It’s been 105 days now — perhaps longer than our relationship itself. I think that’s reason enough to stop waiting, and to stop harbouring hope.
I used to want to build a life with you. I saw the person you could become. I saw the injured child in you while nursing my own, and I believed I had what it took to help us both heal. I thought love alone was enough. I thought my love was enough.
I imagined a life — maybe in Singapore, maybe wherever it took us. But I see now that this was my wishful thinking. When you pictured your life coming together, I was never truly in it.
I don’t know what made you ask if I wanted to go to Japan with you, or live on a boat with you. I curse my own naivety for believing those words — and at the same time, I am proud that I still had the capacity to trust, despite the magnitude of betrayal I had experienced before you.
I’ve also forgiven you for using what I shared about my mother against me. It hurt deeply, but choosing to remain hurt would only cost me my heart. I couldn’t believe my ears when you said those words, yet I chose to believe you didn’t mean them — that they came from anger, not intention.
Perhaps we don’t function or process pain the same way. But I do know this: I tried to love you with honesty and grace, even when it was difficult. But I can't say the same for you because I know you have been replaying the hurtful words I said so you could justify the disappearance.
You once said I enjoyed doubting you, that I was suspicious or controlling about the women around you. But when I look back honestly, I know that isn’t true. I never tried to control who you met for lunches or dinners, who you followed, or whose posts you liked. I even told you never to tell me anything about Jo.
That wasn’t distrust. It was trust.
I encouraged you to have a full life and to widen your social circle. Yet you often compared me to your exes, dropping their names as though I had an ideal to live up to. You could tell me about going out of your way to give someone else a handwritten card, while a letter you promised to post to me never arrived — and I was told I had no right to feel hurt.
When I tried to speak about the ways you hurt me, you became defensive, accusing me of discounting you or of victimising myself. But I never tried to make you feel small. I never paraded my past to diminish you. I simply shared my feelings with someone I loved, hoping for reassurance.
Even when I chose to self-soothe and greet you warmly despite my hurt, I was met with a remark that at least I had my favourite music to make myself feel happy.
The truth is, despite every betrayal I had experienced before you, I still chose to trust you. That trust broke on 2 September 2025 — when I never received a text, an email, or a call back after you said you would reply.
Both versions of you — then and now — hurt. And I don’t believe I was wrong to ask, on that final call when you once again compared me to your exes, which version of you they received, and which one I did.
I was never trying to discount you. I was never trying to hurt you because you broke my heart. I hope you know that.
I believed I was who you wanted because you told me so. You hated that I doubted you. You cried at airports, and I thought those tears meant I mattered. I see now that I was wrong.
Sleeping beside the ghost of you in that grey tee for 105 days is enough. I no longer wish to wait, or to hope that you might do better.
I’ve grieved the version of Christian who once made me feel loved and cared for. Thank you for those memories. I don’t hate you. I just hope you understand that you’ve lost someone who truly believed in you — and tried to help you believe in yourself too.
Maybe not now. Maybe someday.
Good luck with love, life, health, and happiness.
Good luck with Hetzer.
“Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”
― 1Q84
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