Protecting your heart

It’s only now, deep in grief, that I truly understand what every “Sorry, I can’t make it” really feels like. Each one is another wedge between me and the people I thought cared — a quiet fracture in what I hoped was connection.

I’ve lost count of how many messages arrive on the very day we were meant to catch up. A quick, last-minute ‘sorry’. Or worse, no message at all — just silence.

What they don’t realise is that I plan my whole week around these moments. I decline other invitations, knowing I can only manage one social engagement before my “social cup” overflows. I schedule the day, I’ll wash my hair because self-care feels like a mountain now — and in grief, taking care of yourself can feel almost wrong.

I wait for a response about a time, sometimes for days, already knowing the apology will come too late.

Before grief, I might have been guilty of this kind of last-minute cancelation. But honestly, I don’t think so. Keeping commitments was a priority for me. Still, I understand now: people believe their world is more important — their schedules, their lives — and I get it.

If only they knew how much every reschedule shatters me.

Once you let me down, I’m unlikely to reach out again. It’s not that I don’t forgive or understand. It’s that I’m protecting what’s left of my heart — fragile, broken, and barely holding on. Even breathing hurts.

So when I’m let down, I try to file the heartbreak away, to not feel it fully.

And then I tell myself: You were once my friend. We were once connected. But now, life is different.

And I add your name to the “I remember when” memory.

I still smile when I think of you — holding space for the version of life where we were still connected, and things hadn’t yet fallen apart.