No contact is a promise I can never seem to keep.
Kilometer moved to a different country recently. My so-called “love of my life” (Yes, I know he’s not – I read something recently that said “He’s not the Love of your Life, he’s just the person you’ve loved the most at this point in your life.”) packed up and left, and the news hit me like a punch to the chest. I’m not sure why I thought he’d always be within reach. When I learned he was gone, the urge to call him hit me harder than I expected. I knew how terrible it would be to reopen that door, how much damage it might do to my own progress, but the impulse didn’t stop. The connection, or at least the memory of it, lingers like static in the background. I’m not even sure what I wanted to hear from him—maybe something that would let me release the weight of everything left unsaid.
But then there’s Blue. We’ve been no contact for a week or two now. It’s still new, still tender, and I’m trying—really trying—not to break it. We’ve been here before. We’ve broken no contact and survived. It was even fine the last time, almost like we could keep things civil. But this time is different. This time, we’ve been too vulnerable with each other. We’ve let our guards down in ways that make it dangerous to reopen the door. If I reached out now, I know it wouldn’t just be a casual check-in. It would explode things all over again.
Then, because apparently I don’t learn, I broke no contact with Tree this same weekend. And now, here he is—back in my life like a plant that keeps sprouting despite me ripping it out by the roots every few months. We’re doing the familiar dance, the one that always seems harmless at first until it spirals into late-night existential conversations that leave me questioning my life choices. Honestly, at this point, it’s like I’m assembling the Avengers of poor decisions: Kilometer, Blue, and Tree, each representing a different era of emotional chaos.
It’s always the small things that start the unraveling. The song I hear while I’m driving, the street that looks too much like a memory, or the stupid inside joke that no one else understands. They all find ways to remind me of you—the people I’ve walked away from and the people who have walked away from me. And every time I’m reminded, I feel that pull. It’s irrational, this desire to reach out, to say something, anything, just to see if the connection still lingers on their end too.
But I don’t. Or at least I try not to. Because I’ve made promises. Promises to myself, to friends, even to them, that this time would be different—that this time I’d hold the boundary. Yet, I’m rarely successful.
Blue told me that I’d forget about him in a month. We had just ended everything, not with an explosive argument but with a slow bleed of misunderstanding. He said it almost as a consolation to both of us, like it was easier to pretend that time would erase whatever this had been. Forgetting him in a month? What a joke. And now his voice still echoes in my mind on my loneliest nights. He underestimated the weight of unresolved emotions—as did I. Maybe I’m not built to forget.
That’s what scares me about no contact. It feels less like a clean break and more like a new form of agony. Instead of screaming matches or uncomfortable conversations, I’m left with a void. I’m left with silence that I’m supposed to convince myself is somehow healing. They say no contact is for people who need to move on, who need to protect themselves from toxic patterns. And sure, sometimes it works. Maybe it’s saving me from further damage. Maybe it’s saving them too. But that doesn’t mean I’m not haunted by every word I never got to say.
There are so many people I’ve hurt along the way. Relationships that I ruined, not out of malice but out of ignorance and fear. People who trusted me until I gave them reasons not to. And those are the ghosts I carry most heavily. I’m not sure if no contact serves as a punishment or a form of cowardice—an excuse to avoid accountability under the guise of self-preservation.
I think about reaching out to apologize. I dream of crafting the perfect message, something that won’t reopen old wounds but might offer a sliver of closure. But what would I even say? Would it help them, or is it just another attempt to soothe my own guilt? I’ve typed and deleted so many versions of that message. Sometimes, I think just sending it would ease the ache in my chest. Other times, I worry that it would only make things worse, dragging both of us back into a cycle we’ve been trying to escape.
I remember a night not too long ago when I almost broke. I had been drinking—liquid courage, right? My phone sat there, tempting me with its endless possibilities for bad decisions. I scrolled through old conversations, reading the last messages as if they were sacred texts. Each word felt heavier than the last. And then I hovered over the call button. I stared at it, frozen in a battle between my heart and my better judgment. In the end, I didn’t press it. I wish I could say it was because I’d grown stronger, but honestly, it was just exhaustion. I couldn’t bear the thought of hearing their voice again and realizing it didn’t sound like home anymore.
But silence has its own voice. It whispers in the moments when you’re alone, telling you all the things you’ll never say aloud. I replay every interaction, dissecting it for clues about what went wrong and what I could have done differently. The worst part is, I’m not sure I’d even recognize the person I’m holding onto if we met today. People change. We evolve, adapt, harden, soften. Maybe that’s what no contact is supposed to protect us from—the inevitable realization that the version of them you’re mourning is just a memory.
Even knowing that, I can’t fully let go. I want to believe that I’m capable of moving on, of building new connections that won’t end in the same tangled mess. And in some ways, I have. I’m still haunted by the ghosts of people I couldn’t hold onto. I’m afraid of repeating the same mistakes, of hurting people again the way I’ve hurt others.
So here I am, once again trapped between two worlds. One where I keep my promises, hold my boundaries, and learn to live with the silence. And another where I give in to the urge, risking everything for a brief moment of connection that might not even matter. Breaking no contact doesn’t fix anything. I know that. But sometimes, the silence is louder than the words that could ever be spoken.
Maybe one day I’ll get better at this. Maybe I’ll learn to let go without needing to circle back. But for now, I’m still caught in the in-between, haunted by the things I can’t seem to say—or forget.
And yes! I’m a hypocrite – Read the antithesis here.
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Confessions of a Hot Mess is the personal work of Emily Hess. The opinions expressed in this column, as well as those published in The Nevada Sagebrush, are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Sagebrush or its staff.
