I just had to rush out of the sauna to grab my phone and write this. I needed to write it down before it does that thing that thoughts do, and disappears, soon to be long forgotten.
I’ve just started reading Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. On page 5, she mentions that she couldn’t stop saying ‘our’ house after her husband died. She couldn’t bring herself to call it just hers.
I couldn’t focus on the next few pages.
Words hold so much weight.
We can position ourselves, distance ourselves, or keep someone in our orbit, entirely through language.
It got me thinking about him.
From the very beginning, he would always say we. Always we.
We have. We haven’t. We will live here. We will move there. We will go. We will do.
And I would be in his house, with his things, but he would never say that. He would refer to everything as ours.
Our bed. Our bedroom. Our floor. Our bathroom. Our future.
The first time I heard him refer to something as ours, it lit me up from the inside.
He wasn’t love bombing. It wasn’t performative. It was as mundane as him saying, “it’s in our bedroom”, when I was looking for my phone.
It was so certain. We. Ours. Us.
And I remember the sensation in my belly when he removed the ‘we’ and said ‘I’ for the first time. It was near the end. It caught on my ear like a sweater ripping out an earring. I didn’t acknowledge it. I daren’t even think it. But my heart dropped and landed right in my stomach.
My subconscious was doing what my conscious wasn’t ready to comprehend.
And then more and more frequently it was ‘I’ and ‘my’. It wasn’t him and me anymore. It was him. And me.
He didn’t ever say it coldly. He was as sweet as ever. Just like it was before, it was matter of fact. Mundane. Certain.
After I ended things, he told me that he was never planning on leaving me. That wasn’t in his head at all. And I believe him.
But he didn’t realise that by changing just one word in a sentence, he removed me from his future. From his present too. Unaware of it.
His subconscious was doing what his conscious wasn’t ready to comprehend.
There’s something about mouth on body. The wanting of it. True desire. And around the same time he stopped saying ‘our’, his appetite for mine collapsed entirely.
He used to be ravenous. I’d be finished, satisfied, and he’d want more. Before we ended, I think it had been weeks. Months, maybe.
I was still giving him head though. Of course. More and more frequently, trying to prove I was worth keeping. Trying to earn back what I once had.
I remember the day he saw me in new lingerie. As an avid lingerie collector, I am never in short supply.
So I did the thing. Undress slowly, stockings, suspender belt. Delicate lace. Full works. Immaculate.
I remember he didn’t gasp. For the first time ever, he didn’t gasp like I was the most delectable thing he’d ever seen.
I felt tiny. So so tiny. So small. Almost invisible. Like if not handled with care in that moment, I might get lost like an eyelash in a bedsheet.
I remember knowing then. I remember it. I remember it. I cannot forget it.
I just realised it’s his birthday today. Happy Birthday.
Maybe that’s why I was thinking about him.
You always think about him.
That’s not true. I don’t think I’ve even thought of him once in the last few days.
That’s because you were hyper-focused on writing. You didn’t even stop for a cigarette on either of those days. Not one.
Damn it. She’s right. Not even a cigarette. Not one.
Maybe I need to hyper-focus like that forever. Spend every conscious moment drowning in a task. Writing, editing, writing, editing. Until I fall asleep.
Maybe that’s the only cure for a heartbreak like this. That, or wait until I’m in love or heartbroken over someone else. I have a feeling that won’t do the trick either though.
Must find the cure.
SOME TIME BETWEEN NOW AND THEN
Thursday, 18 December 2025
10:25 am
As a yearner and a thinker, I find myself studying every situation obsessively post mortem. I find myself trawling through the past with a fine tooth comb— nay, a scalpel— trying to identify the rot. The reason for this isn’t entirely unknown to me. I am obsessed with the why and the how and the when. Like my life depends on it. It’s the only way I can let things go.
Perhaps I’m looking for ways to remove myself from blame. When I can entirely blame it on someone else’s wrongdoing. Or how it was them who wasn’t good enough. That tends to be where the rumination ends.
But this whole thing with him is an anomaly. An outlier to the rule. No matter how many different ways I dissect it and put it back together. Every night I revisit the same cadaver, scalpel in hand, and I perform another autopsy on the relationship.
No matter whose fault it is, whether the death was inevitable or the fault of an individual, it doesn’t matter.
I can’t accept the result. It’s inconclusive. And I go to bed the next night, lying awake, trying again.
And every time I come away with blood on my hands, gasping for air, sobbing over a corpse.
NOW
Well. I have the answer to one of my questions. The when.
The first time he said I instead of we. That’s when.
See you next time in the confessional.
Blithe x
He stopped loving me on a Wednesday
by Blithe Saxon
He stopped loving me on a Wednesday.
It wasn’t sudden like I’d always imagined.
It was like a boiling bath that slowly goes cold while you’re still in it.
Like—everything was fine,
until suddenly I’m lying there shivering in tepid water and both of our filth.
He stopped loving me on a Wednesday.
It was the afternoon
I was wearing his sweater
and when I leaned in to kiss him, he turned his head and gave me his cheek instead.
I searched his eyes for answers, but there was nothing there.
And then the final nail in the coffin:
He gave me a sideways smile and a look that left me wondering when I became invisible—before picking up his phone and never looking at me again.
He stopped loving me on a Wednesday.
I knew it without words, but I had to be sure.
I had to know if this was a fresh wound or a new one forming.
“I love you,” I said.
“I said, I love you,” I repeated.
He stopped loving me on a Wednesday.
I felt it in my bones before my ears even registered the silence.
That night, I cried in almost darkness.
I left the light on in case he changed his mind.
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