Love turned trauma
Hello Redditor,
It’s been one year and one month since my breakup. I’m 28 now. On the day of the breakup, I thought it was just another usual fight and that we would patch things up again after a few days. But after two days, I realized I truly couldn’t live without her.
We’ve known each other since 2013. It was an on-and-off relationship, but for the last three years before the breakup, we talked every single day without fail. Even during the worst situations, we somehow found a way to communicate. But after the breakup, we didn’t even speak in double digits over an entire year.
I went back to her again and again. I apologized, I gave solutions, and I tried everything possible to fix the relationship. But nothing worked. She stayed stubborn.
To cope with the pain, I drank, took drugs, started writing, reading books, traveling, visiting temples, praying to God, and even tattooed her name on me. I quit my job and started studying again. I thought these things would help me move on, but at the same time, I still kept trying to get back with her because I genuinely felt she was the love of my life.
I suffered a lot internally. I still can’t sleep properly. Eventually, I decided to go for counseling and started taking medication. It makes me feel okay during the daytime, but nights are worse because everything comes back in my thoughts and dreams.
Because of this trauma, I developed anxiety, depression, and even fear of crowds — things I had never experienced before. At the same time, she was happily spending time with her friends, posting photos and statuses online. Before all this, I was the only guy she used to post apart from her brother. Now it’s fancy restaurants, fancy friends, and a completely different life.
I don’t deserve this kind of suffering.
So, I asked her out for lunch one last time to get closure. I met her after 5–6 months. The moment I saw her, my eyes filled with tears because we used to meet three days a week, even during our worst phases.
We had lunch, and she started talking casually like nothing had happened. I didn’t want to ruin the moment. Finally, I asked her for the last time whether this relationship would ever work again. She said no. She told me she was very happy starting a new life without me and that she was busy choosing her groom.
I never expected her to say that so casually, with a smile on her face. I still remember that smile.
Then we went to a random café. She wanted me to talk, so we spoke for almost two hours. I asked all the questions that had been haunting me for the past year, with tears in my eyes. But her answers were just “yes” and “no.” She couldn’t answer properly, and I never got the closure I wanted — even though that was the whole reason I planned the lunch.
Later, we took an auto and reached the metro station. I requested her to get down and stay a little longer, but she didn’t. After she left, I sat near the metro entrance pillar for almost an hour waiting for my friend to bring my things. When he came and asked what happened, I couldn’t even speak. I walked away from him, bought a cigarette and a water bottle from a petty shop, sat alone in a corner where nobody could see me, and cried like hell thinking about everything that had happened that day — realizing that was probably our last meeting forever.
I cried until the cigarette finished. Then I washed my face, took the metro, and decided to start a new life.
But the problem is, I still remember her more than ten times a day. It’s been 2.5 months since that last meeting. I thought I would move on quickly because there are no chats, no meetings, no stalking, and no indirect contact anymore. But nothing worked.
Even this morning, I had another dream about her. This has been happening for the past year. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with what feels like a panic attack and start crying like a little kid.
I grew up with one unspoken rule in life: never forget your roots — where you came from, how you came up, and the people who stayed beside you. We are the kind of people who never give up on our own mentally. That’s how we grew up. We fight for our people, stand by our side no matter what, and sometimes people even sacrifice themselves for the ones they love.
And maybe that’s why this hurts so much.
Bottomline:
I grew up in a place where loyalty meant everything. We never forgot our roots, never gave up on our people, and always fought for the ones we loved. That mindset became part of me without even realizing it.
Now I finally understand the truth — I wasn’t weak for holding on. I was just loyal to the wrong person.