The first time I tried to burn something of his, I used one of those fancy sage sticks from my friend’s spiritual starter kit. She’d gotten very into ‘smoke cleansing’ after her third situationship of the year ended in ghosting and mildly toxic voice notes. I followed the ritual: I lit the sage, waved it around the letter like I was banishing a Victorian ghost, and whispered something about cutting energetic ties.
The paper didn’t even smoulder.
I stood there, slightly high from the scent of her overpriced incense bundle, clutching three pages of handwritten heartbreak, thinking: Is this how we heal now? With rituals we don’t understand, herbs we can’t pronounce, and an Insta reel telling us to ‘release what no longer serves’?
I ended up using a lighter and a chipped mug in my kitchen sink. No moonlight. No chanting. No divine closure. But the flame caught. And that was enough.
Let me say this straight: burning the love letter won’t erase what happened. It won’t reverse the memories or remove the echo of his laugh from your skull. But it might do something almost as powerful—it might remind your brain that the story has ended. And more importantly, that you’re the one ending it.
The Problem With ‘Reflecting’ (a.k.a. Mentally Texting Him for the 400th Time)
Let’s be honest—half the time we say we’re ‘processing,’ we’re just arguing with a ghost.
You’re not reflecting. Most of the times, you’re either mentally fighting with him in your head, hoping that he’ll finally get your point and will beg forgiveness. Or, you’re ‘drafting’ what you would say if he suddenly texted you, ‘I miss you, I was wrong, you were the love of my life and I’ve started therapy.’
You’re not integrating. You’re reliving. You’re rerunning the same three memories like an emotional sitcom rerun, hoping this time the ending will change. Hoping he’ll change.
He won’t. (If he does, he’ll probably do it silently, somewhere far away, and date a woman named Saffron who bakes sourdough and doesn’t overthink emojis.)
And that’s fine.
Because you don’t need him to change. You need to change your relationship to the story.
The Real Villain: Your Lovely, Lying Brain
Here’s what neuroscience has to say about all this: your brain wants closure, but it also wants comfort. And sometimes, it thinks they’re the same thing.
That’s why you start missing him right when you’re almost okay.
Suddenly, it’s ‘Maybe he wasn’t that bad’, ‘Maybe we just had bad timing’, ‘Maybe I overreacted when he forgot my birthday and slept with his coworker’.
Darling, that’s not forgiveness. That’s dopamine withdrawal with a side of romantic delusion.
When you’re in pain, the brain will do anything to get a hit of what once felt good. Even if it hurt you. Even if it almost destroyed you. Your brain will repaint red flags as misunderstood quirks and call it healing. It’ll do literally anything — bless this kind creature — just to keep you from going ballistic.
But let’s be precise: memory is not truth. It’s a chemically tinted re-edit of your experience, coloured by what you wish had happened.
So no, you’re not broken for struggling to let go.
You’re just running emotional code that requires an update.
