“I Still Think About Them More Than I Want to Admit”
“It’s been a long time. I’ve moved on in all the obvious ways. I’ve dated other people. I’ve gone through all the rituals of letting go. But the truth is, I still think about them more than I want to admit. They still show up in my mind—in memories, in dreams, in ordinary moments. It’s embarrassing, honestly. I don’t even know what I’d say to them anymore. But they’re still here, in me, somehow.”
Dear Nico,
That last line—that they’re still here in you—hit with quiet force. Because what you’ve described is not failure to move on, but something far more common and far more human: the endurance of emotional residue. The way a person can live on in our internal landscape long after the relationship itself has ended.
I hear the conflict in your voice. You’ve done all the things that signify closure. You’ve made new memories, opened new doors. You don’t reach out, you don’t indulge the fantasy of reunion. And yet, there they are—threaded into your daily consciousness, showing up like background music in a scene that no longer includes them.
That doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means you’re honest.
There’s a part of emotional memory that doesn’t obey logic. The brain can catalogue events, file away timelines, and create distance. But the emotional body works differently. It holds on to impressions, sensations, echoes. The smell of a place. The way the light hit their face one morning. The sentence you never said aloud. These aren’t things you choose to carry—they choose you. Because they mattered. And things that matter don’t vanish just because time has passed.
I don’t hear obsession in what you’ve shared. I hear reverberation. And sometimes those echoes grow louder in the quiet moments—when you’re walking home alone, or stirring a cup of coffee, or watching a show you once watched together. It’s not about the past having power over you. It’s about how memory moves through you when you’re least defended.
And you’re not wrong for wanting those thoughts to be gone. There’s often a secret shame in still thinking about someone who is no longer in our lives. We’re told that closure is a decision, a ritual, a clean emotional exit. But for many people, closure is not a door you walk through. It’s a room you learn to live in differently. And part of that room still holds their shape.
What I hear most in your words is not longing, but fatigue. You’re tired of how often they arrive in your thoughts. Tired of the emotional flicker that still follows their ghost. And maybe you’re also tired of judging yourself for it.
But here’s something I’ve come to believe: not every lasting presence is an unhealed wound. Sometimes a person stays with us because they were formative. Because they taught us something, or stirred something, or awakened a part of us we didn’t know existed. That doesn’t mean you want them back. It doesn’t mean you haven’t healed. It just means they left an imprint—and that imprint still echoes.
There’s nothing embarrassing about that. You don’t owe the world a perfectly edited version of your emotional history. Some people matter forever, not because we cling to them, but because they became part of our internal furniture. We rearrange. We redecorate. But a piece of them remains.
And maybe the real question isn’t, “Why are they still here?” Maybe it’s “What do I do with their presence now?” Maybe it’s not about pushing the thoughts away, but understanding what they’re pointing to. Is it loneliness? A part of you you first saw through them? A version of connection that you’ve yet to find elsewhere?
You can honor what was without trying to recreate it. You can feel their presence without letting it shape your choices. You can think of them and still be fully devoted to the life you’re building now.
Some memories don’t ask to be solved. They just want to be witnessed. Quietly. Without shame.
You’re not broken for remembering. You’re not weak for feeling. You’re human.
And you’re not alone in this.
–RJ