When a relationship ends badly, we start to reread the entire story through the ending. We comb back through every moment, every memory, trying to prove it was doomed all along, that it was always wrong, that it always hurt. As if locating the tear retroactively might alleviate the hurt we feel now, or give us back some agency we thought we lost when we were inside the relationship.
Maybe this is how we survive the helplessness of love ending: by turning confusion into narrative, pain into proof, heartbreak into something we can finally hold.
