Chapter 2 : Why did you Let Go?

“Why did you let go?” Kunal texted.

The typing indicator appeared. Disappeared.

Kunal immediately typed again.

“I’m sorry if it’s an unsolicited question after all these years.”

“No no,” Smita replied.

Kunal waited for a response. A couple of minutes passed, but the typing indicator did not return. The silence itself began to feel heavy. Before he could stop himself, he continued typing.

“I mean… I always told myself what I heard from you back then. That you lost feelings for me because of the long distance. And after all that time when I was still trying to fight for you tooth and nail through 2018 and 2019, I finally gave up too. When you said you didn’t feel for me the same way anymore, I just told myself I needed to let go of you.”

The typing indicator appeared again. And then finally, after what felt like a very long five minutes, her message arrived.

“Kunal, I’ll be very frank.”

Something inside him went completely still as he opened the message and watched it fill his screen.

“Kunal… I don’t think I ever ‘let go’ in a simple or emotionless way. I think somewhere along the line, the distance, the uncertainty, and everything that would eventually involve families started feeling bigger than what I emotionally and mentally felt capable of carrying through at that point in my life.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I gave up too soon. I’ve wondered that too. But at the time, it felt like I was constantly torn between what my heart wanted and what my mind feared wouldn’t realistically work out. And that fear slowly exhausted me.

It was never because you didn’t matter to me. You did. A lot. I just reached a point where I didn’t know if I had the strength to keep holding on while feeling so unsure about how everything would unfold in the real world around us.

I know that may not make it hurt less, and I’m sorry for that. But I hope you know my decision didn’t come from lack of care. It came from feeling overwhelmed, scared, and emotionally stretched in ways I didn’t know how to handle better back then.”

For years, Kunal had carried a private version of their ending — one where she had stopped loving him while he alone carried the ruins of what they had been. It had become such a familiar pain that he no longer questioned it. Therapy had helped him survive it. Other people had helped him grow around it. But the wound itself had quietly remained untouched.

“It was never because you didn’t matter to me,” she had written. “You did. A lot.”

He read the line once. Then again. And suddenly, for the first time in years, he realized he had mistaken her silence for indifference. There was a strange helpless emptiness gripping his chest. One that he had muscled through over the years and finally moved past. Suddenly, it was back, less intense, but still gripping, like someone was choking his breath and filling up his eyes with water.

Kunal typed in: “Why did you never talk to me!”

to be continued…