Already Gone

He broke up with me by text.

WTF?

I wanted to be furious.

But the honest version is this.

His response times had been widening like a tide going out.

He just beat me to the punchline.

Our interests were very different.

I talked about travel, books, business, boxing.

He talked about trains, Melways, gardening, fish tanks.

I showed interest in his Melways collection. I asked after his sick fish by name.

He didn't return the favour.

I'd been planning a trip to Italy and told him where I wanted to go.

Not asking permission. Just sharing. The way you do when something lights you up.

He nodded. Said nothing. Picked up his phone.

That was it. Topic closed. Never returned to.

It wasn't one conversation.

It was a pattern. I'd throw something out and watch it sink.

Nothing came back.

The last dinner we shared was supposed to be a celebration.

A business win I'd been working towards for months.

I arrived at his place bursting out of my skin. He was in the kitchen cooking. I'd mentioned the celebration on the phone that afternoon. I waited for him to bring it up. There was no mention of it. I had to ask him to guess my good news.

He. Simply. Couldn't. Remember.

I tried to stay cheerful. I wanted the night to end well.

But he was silent and stone-faced. Already gone.

There was no celebration. No conversation. No sex.

I drove home.

I'd got used to his silent moods. Used to topics disappearing. At some point, I stopped noticing how often I made excuses for him.

What was I getting from the relationship, if it wasn't communication?

He was a good cook. And the sex was excellent.

His lips were more useful in bed than they were in conversation.

I liked the companionship. I liked the sex. And I was still hopeful.

Maybe something deeper would grow and make the silences and the differences matter less.

The breakup text arrived shortly after that last dinner.

It hurt. Of course it hurt.

I would've preferred a conversation. A phone call. Anything with a little dignity.

But the more distance I get from it, the less angry I am about the text itself.

The text wasn't the story.

Silence has a grammar.

I read it. I just didn't say it out loud.

There were moments I talked myself into the relationship.

There were moments I talked myself out of it.

I think he was doing the same.

His silence wasn't the only silence in the relationship.

I'd said it once: our differences might not matter now, but they could in six months or a year.

He'd said he was sad when I told him I'd never marry again.

Maybe we had both revealed more than we meant to.

Something changed after that.

At our last dinner, I stayed hopeful.

I kept starting conversations he wouldn't join.

I felt it and kept performing anyway.

I made allowances for what never settled.

I had stayed silent about what I already knew.

I wasn't brave enough to ask for a purely sexual relationship.

I stayed silent when I sensed he wanted more.

Perhaps he went silent when he sensed I couldn't give it.

I had talked myself into it for companionship and sex.

He had talked himself out of it.

We both seemed to know it wouldn't last.

By the time the breakup text arrived, it wasn't news.

It was punctuation.

He had already gone.

I had already read the ending.

We just hadn't said it out loud.