unloved before you

after the silence

Collen didn’t explain this time.

He didn’t respond with comfort, or even anger. Just… silence.

Then one morning, Thandi tried to send him a message—and saw the word that hit harder than any insult.

Blocked.

No warning. No closure. Just a wall.

He was gone.

---

The first few days, she told herself it was just space. That he’d come back when he cooled down. That the love they shared wasn’t so fragile it could vanish without effort.

But days turned into weeks.

Weeks into months.

And Collen stayed gone.

No texts. No missed calls. No apology. Just complete disconnection.

And that’s when the heartbreak began to rot into something deeper—disbelief.

How could a man who once called her his peace now treat her like a burden? How could someone who claimed to understand her insecurities now punish her for them?

Thandi lay awake many nights asking herself if she was the problem.

Was I too much? Too afraid? Too broken?

But no answer came. Just the echo of her own thoughts in a room that once held laughter.

---

Life kept moving, even when she couldn’t.

She stopped checking his socials. Deleted old messages. Gave back the necklace he once gifted her—left it with his cousin without a word.

She cried quietly in taxis. Nodded through conversations at work. Smiled when people asked if she was okay. But she wasn’t.

She missed him—yes.

But worse than that, she missed who she thought he was.

And that version of Collen…

That man was gone.

---

Something shifted in her around month three.

Not dramatically. Not with some grand realization.

It was a quiet acceptance.

That sometimes, love ends without goodbyes.

That sometimes, being blocked isn’t rejection—it’s redirection.

That maybe, just maybe, love that demands you never struggle isn’t really love at all.

And for the first time in a long time, she chose not to chase.

Not him.

Not closure.

Just herself.

It took her weeks to build the courage.

Thandi had written the message in her head a hundred times. Sometimes it was soft and apologetic. Other times, it was furious. But in the end, she settled on something honest.

> “Hi Collen. I know things ended badly. I just wanted to talk. Not to fight. Just to understand… for peace. I hope you’re well.”

She sent it from a friend’s number.

It delivered.

And was read.

But there was no reply.

---

Days passed.

A part of her still hoped. Maybe he was thinking of what to say. Maybe he just needed time.

But when she finally did get a response, it came through mutual friends—quietly, indirectly.

“He says there’s nothing to talk about,” someone told her. “He’s moved on.”

Just like that.

As if she had been nothing more than a passing chapter in his story.

As if all the nights they held each other, all the laughter, all the I love yous—meant nothing.

She sat alone in her bedroom that night, phone in hand, staring at the silence that followed.

No one tells you how much it hurts when someone you loved chooses to erase you… while you’re still holding the pieces.

---

Thandi didn’t try again after that.

It wasn’t pride. It was survival.

She realized she couldn’t beg someone to care. Couldn’t bleed herself dry trying to prove her heart was worth staying for.

He had made his choice.

Now, she had to make hers.

So she turned the phone off. Opened a blank journal. And wrote the first words that didn’t feel like heartbreak:

“I’m still here. And I still deserve love.”