A friend told me that she met her ex for dinner, and I asked her how he is. She replied that he's happily engaged now, and looked straight into my eyes. We didn't say anything, but her sad eyes spoke volumes. They told me that she loved him so much she wished she could have been someone else for him. And I understood, cos I had been there too. But it was beyond us to be someone else.

I wanted to tell her: Look, isn't it funny? When I broke up, I kept repeating to myself the phrase "He and I are not in love" so I could drum the breakup into my head, so I could acknowledge its truth. Then after a while, that phrase became an involuntary mantra, an odd statement that popped up out of nowhere all the time even though it means nothing now. The sentence just became part of me, and it belongs to me as much as my hair or my nose does.

We're not bitter. We were only being ourselves. But I didn't breathe a word and the moment passed.