I stumbled upon our text thread by accident. Scrolling for something else, thumb moving too fast, and then his name stopped me. A former friend. Someone I used to know. I sat there in my car in a parking lot I don’t even remember choosing to pull into, reading three years of conversation I hadn’t opened in a long time.
And here’s what I felt. Not relief that it ended. Not the clear-eyed nod of someone who dodged something. I felt the specific, stupid ache of missing him.
Which makes no sense, if you do the math. I did the math, sitting in that car. Who showed up when the other one was in crisis, in the mess, in the fallout. Who kept the friendship alive on their own oxygen while the other one breathed easy. And most importantly, who always forgave who. I know how that math comes out. I’ve known for a while. And I still missed him like he was the roommate who used to leave the porch light on for me.
That’s the part I need you to sit with, because I think you’ve done this too. Not with a friend, maybe. With someone else. But you know this particular ache, the one that survives the evidence.
There’s a quote from writer Olga Khazan that’s been stirring around in my head since I read it. She describes it like walking through a rose garden. You can feel the thorns while you’re in it. But when you look back, all you see is the roses.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a diagnosis.
We are built to forget pain. It’s not weakness, it’s design. Ask anyone nursing a hangover at 7am, swearing to God they will never drink again, and check back with them in three weeks. The body keeps the memory of a good night out on a much longer lease than it keeps the memory of the bathroom floor. That’s mercy, most of the time. It’s what lets you go back into a life that’s already hurt you and keep living it anyway.
But mercy makes a lousy compass when you’re deciding whether to text someone back.
My wife has caught me at this more than once. Someone burns me clean through, and somewhere down the road I’ll mention them softly, almost fondly, like the burn was a long time ago and probably wasn’t that bad. And she’ll look at me and say, “Have you forgotten what they did to you?”
Yes. Obviously. That’s the whole problem. I have to be reminded of my own history like I’m reading someone else’s file.
I used to think that forgetting was betrayal, that if I really respected myself I’d hold onto the sting the way I hold onto everything else. But I don’t think that anymore. I think the forgetting is automatic. What’s optional is what you do once you notice it happening.
So let me ask you the question I had to ask myself in that parking lot, and I want you to answer it honestly, not the version of the answer that makes you feel like a healthy, evolved person.
Who are you white-washing right now?
Not the person who was simply wrong for you, timing or geography or two people who wanted different things. I mean the person who showed up petty. Who kept score in a game they never told you you were playing. Who let you carry the friendship, the relationship, the whatever-it-was, on your back while they walked beside you empty-handed. The one where, if a friend described this exact situation happening to them, you would tell that friend to run.
You’re not thinking about the weight right now. You’re thinking about the porch light and how it draws you back.
That’s the fog. That’s where you’re standing. Not stupid, not weak, just human, walking back through a garden your own mind has quietly stripped of thorns.
Here’s where it gets dangerous. You’ll be sitting somewhere ordinary, a car, a kitchen, three in the morning with your phone lighting up your face, and you’ll start typing. Not because you forgot what happened. Because your mind has already edited what happened. You’ll tell yourself it’s different now, that maybe you were too sensitive, that maybe the imbalance was your imagination, that the roses were real and the thorns were the exaggeration.
You are one sent text away from finding out they weren’t.
That’s the moment I want you to catch. Not after. Not while you’re back in it, three weeks deep, wondering how you got here again, doing the same math you swore you’d never do twice. I want you to catch it right there, thumb over the keyboard, heart already halfway convinced this time will be different.
Because it won’t be. The thorns didn’t move. You did. And your memory did you the disservice of letting you forget where they were.
I still miss him some days. I probably always will, a little. But missing something and going back for it are two different decisions, and only one of them costs you your dignity.
You’re standing in the garden right now, looking back at all those roses. Somewhere close by, your hand is already reaching for the thorns you told yourself weren’t real.
This is your moment of reckoning. Step into it.
🖤 Onward and upward,
Kristen
P.S. I wrote this for you. Tell me if I’m hitting the mark — or missing it entirely. kristen@kristenziman.com
