The Last Message I Never Sent

The Last Message I Never Sent

BY [ WAQAR ALI ]

Sometimes closure doesn't come from answers—but from finding the courage to stop waiting for them.

I never deleted our chat.

Not because I wanted to relive the good parts, and definitely not to torture myself with the bad ones. It just… stayed there, like a forgotten postcard tucked in the back of a drawer—harmless until opened.

For the first six months after you left, I typed a message every night.

Some were long, spilling with the kind of honesty I never dared to show while we were together. Others were short: “I saw your favorite coffee today.” Or “Do you ever think of me too?”

But I never pressed send. Not once.

It wasn’t pride. It was fear—fear that you wouldn’t respond, or worse, that you would… and confirm that the person I once loved had truly disappeared.

You left quietly. No dramatic goodbye. Just a slow fading, like the sun dipping below the horizon. You were still warm for a while, still present in the background of my days. But the light kept dimming, and I kept pretending I didn’t notice.

Friends asked what happened. I told them we “just drifted apart.” A safe, vague phrase. But the truth was, I was still swimming toward you while you had already found the shore and walked away.

I remember the last time we saw each other clearly. It was raining—how cliché, right? We met at the corner café, the one with the uneven table where we used to talk for hours. You were already seated when I arrived, scrolling through your phone like it held the answer to a more interesting life. When you looked up, your eyes didn’t soften the way they used to. They looked through me, not at me.

We talked, but not really. You told me you were “figuring things out,” and I nodded, even though I knew I wasn’t part of that equation anymore.

I waited for the final blow—a breakup, an explanation, a closure speech. But it never came. You hugged me, said “take care,” and disappeared into the mist like some tragic character from a novel.

I stood in the rain long after you left, not because I was dramatic, but because my legs forgot how to move. My heart still expected you to turn around, to say, “Wait, I didn’t mean it. I still love you.”

But you didn’t.

The months that followed were quiet. Too quiet. My world had been so filled with your noise—your late-night songs, your voice notes, your terrible movie commentary—that the silence now screamed.

I tried distractions. Dating apps, late-night walks, a gym membership I never used. I even bought a plant. (It died. Sorry.)

But nothing stuck. Everything felt like a poor imitation of what used to be.

Then, one random Tuesday, something changed.

I was scrolling through my phone during a train ride when your name popped up in my saved chats. Not because you messaged. Of course not. It was just… there. That untouched, unsent message glowing softly on the screen like a ghost.

I clicked it.

It read: “I wish you hadn’t given up on us.”

It was dated three months ago. Three months of me still trying to speak to someone who stopped listening.

That was the moment I finally understood something important:

Closure isn’t always a conversation.

Sometimes, it’s a realization.

Sometimes, it’s deleting a message you were never meant to send.

So I did.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t curse you. I didn’t even feel much at all. Just… calm. Like I’d finally set down a heavy bag I’d been carrying across too many emotional miles.

And that night, for the first time in almost a year, I didn’t open your chat. I didn’t type a message. I didn’t wait.

Instead, I picked up my pen and started writing this story—not to reach you, but to reclaim me.

Because healing doesn’t always look like a dramatic breakthrough.

Sometimes, it’s just the quiet act of choosing yourself, even when part of you still aches for someone who wouldn’t.

And if by some strange twist of fate, you’re reading this now—no, I don’t hate you. I don’t even regret you.

You were a beautiful chapter.

But I’m writing new ones now.