The Text I Never Got Back

I still remember the last message I sent you.

“Hey… are you okay?”

Simple. Soft. No punctuation, because I didn’t want it to seem too serious, too heavy. I didn’t want to scare you off. I just wanted to know you were alright.

I waited. Ten minutes. An hour. A day. Nothing.

You were always quick to reply, even when your messages were short or scattered. You’d tell me you were “bad at texting,” but I never really minded. There was still a rhythm between us — an unspoken flow that made the silences feel natural. Until this one.

This silence was different. This one grew heavier by the hour.

At first, I rationalized it. You were busy. Maybe you fell asleep. Maybe your phone died. Maybe you were just overwhelmed — you said life had been a lot lately. I reminded myself that you’d told me once, in passing, that when you get anxious, you pull away. I tried to be patient.

But the days kept passing.

I stared at my screen so many times that week, rereading our last few conversations. There wasn’t a fight. No argument. No warning signs. We’d just had lunch together the week before. You hugged me tighter than usual, told me, “I’m glad you’re in my life.”

Were those just words? Were you already halfway out the door when you said them?

I typed and deleted three different follow-ups. At one point, I started to write a long, emotional paragraph asking if I’d done something wrong. I never sent it. Something about hitting “send” felt too much like begging. And I didn’t want to beg someone to care.

So I waited instead. I told myself: If they want to talk to you, they will.

But you never did.

The thing about not getting a reply is that it leaves room for every theory. Every insecurity starts to stretch its legs and take a walk through your thoughts. Maybe you met someone else. Maybe you never really liked me at all. Maybe I said something and didn’t realize it. Maybe… maybe I was just easy to leave behind.

That last one stung the most.

It wasn’t just the absence of a reply. It was the absence of an ending. You left the story open — no conclusion, no final chapter, no closure. Just an unfinished message hanging in space like a door that won’t shut.

And in that space, I filled the silence with doubt. With questions. With what-ifs and maybe-I-should-haves. I played old voice notes just to remember the sound of your laugh. I looked at your social media, looking for signs of life — proof that you were still there, just not… here.

And you were. Posting, smiling, living. Just not with me.

At some point, I realized I wasn’t waiting for you anymore — I was waiting for a version of you that didn’t exist. A version that cared enough to say something, anything, even if it was goodbye.

But silence was your answer. And I had to learn to accept it.

That was the hardest part. Because closure isn’t something someone gives you. It’s something you have to create for yourself, even when it feels unfair. Even when it hurts. Even when you don’t understand why.

I stopped checking your page. I archived our chat so I wouldn’t see your name pop up every time I opened my messages. I blocked your number, not out of anger, but out of mercy — for myself.

Somewhere along the way, I started sleeping better. I stopped reaching for my phone in the middle of the night. I started laughing again — real laughter, not the polite kind. I saw a movie by myself, just because I could. I started healing in the quiet, in the space you left behind.

It wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t clean. Grief never is, especially when there’s nothing to bury.

But I grew.

And now, months later, that text still lives in my phone, like a fossil of something that once mattered. “Hey… are you okay?”

No response.

I don’t think I’ll ever delete it. Not because I’m holding on, but because it reminds me of how far I’ve come. Of how much I wanted to love someone who couldn’t show up for me. Of the strength it took to walk away from that silence and learn to live with it.

I don’t need a reply anymore. I don’t need an explanation or an apology. Your silence spoke louder than anything you could’ve typed.

So I’ll keep that message right where it is — not as a question anymore, but as a lesson.

A reminder that sometimes, the text you never get back is the one that teaches you how to move forward.