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Episode
15 min
Lissin
· Apr 28, 2026
Love in Reverse
Unraveling Us: A Love Story in Reverse
Journey backward through heartbreak, where every ending aches for the moment it all began.
Unraveling Us: A Love Story in Reverse
Lissin
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About this episode
Journey backward through heartbreak, where every ending aches for the moment it all began.
0:00
Please, you said, don't make this harder than it has to be.
0:08
And that was the moment I realized we were speaking two entirely different languages.
0:21
You were talking about the logistics of moving boxes, of separating a life into two neat, manageable piles.
0:36
I was trying to perform emergency surgery on a dying star with my bare hands.
0:48
Harder than it has to be.
0:51
As if there was an easy version of this.
0:57
As if there was a gentle way to watch a decade of your life pack a bag and walk out the door.
1:11
I’ve been replaying that.
1:14
Over and over.
1:16
Your words.
1:18
The look on your face.
1:21
Not angry.
1:23
Not even sad, really.
1:26
Just… tired.
1:28
The kind of tired that settles in your bones after a long, pointless journey.
1:39
You were already gone.
1:42
The conversation was just a formality.
1:48
A courtesy.
1:49
And I keep asking myself, where did it begin?
1:56
Not this conversation.
1:59
Not the end.
2:01
But the beginning of the end.
2:05
Was it three nights ago?
2:09
With the fight?
2:11
It feels so stupid to even say it out loud now.
2:18
It was about dinner.
2:21
About you forgetting to pick up the curry on your way home.
2:29
I had called you at five thirty, same as I always do.
2:37
I said the words, "Don't forget the Panang curry from Lotus Siam." And you said, "Got it." And then you walked in at seven thirty with a sad-looking pizza and a shrug.
3:01
"I forgot," you said.
3:05
And you didn't just forget the curry.
3:10
You forgot the conversation.
3:14
You had no memory of it at all.
3:19
And something in me just… snapped.
3:24
It wasn't about the food.
3:27
It was never about the food.
3:31
It was about the space between you saying "Got it" and you walking through the door.
3:44
A two-hour void where I simply ceased to exist in your mind.
3:52
And I started yelling.
3:56
Not because I was hungry, but because I was terrified.
4:04
Because for two hours, I was completely and utterly gone from your world.
4:14
And I had this sudden, chilling premonition that the two hours were about to become two days, then two weeks, then the rest of my life.
4:34
You just stood there.
4:37
You took the yelling.
4:40
You absorbed it like a sponge, with that same tired look.
4:49
You didn't fight back.
4:52
That was the worst part.
4:55
I wanted you to fight back.
4:59
I wanted you to scream that I was being irrational, that it was just curry, for God's sake.
5:13
I wanted you to engage.
5:16
To be present in the fight.
5:20
But you weren't.
5:22
You were a million miles away.
5:27
You were already in this room, packing this box, saying "don't make this harder than it has to be." The fight wasn't the cause.
5:45
It was just the echo of a decision you'd already made.
5:53
So when was the decision made?
5:58
If not then, when?
6:00
I keep rewinding.
6:03
I'm scrubbing backwards through the timeline of us, looking for the frame.
6:13
The single frame where the color shifts.
6:19
Where the light in your eyes dims just a little.
6:26
Was it last Christmas, when your mother said we were "so comfortable" and you just smiled, but didn't agree?
6:42
Was it that trip to Lisbon where we spent more time on our phones than talking to each other?
6:56
Every meal, a glowing screen between us.
7:02
Each of us performing our happiness for an audience that wasn't the person sitting right across the table.
7:17
God, we took so many pictures.
7:22
Hundreds of them.
7:24
Smiling.
7:25
Holding hands.
7:27
Looking out at the ocean.
7:31
Proof.
7:32
We were creating evidence for a crime that hadn't been committed yet.
7:42
Look how happy we were.
7:45
Look how perfect it was.
7:49
But when I look at them now… I see it.
7:54
I see the space between our hands.
7:59
I see the smiles that don't quite reach our eyes.
8:07
We weren't capturing a memory.
8:11
We were building an alibi.
8:15
The silence.
8:17
That's where it lived.
8:20
The silence in the car.
8:23
The silence during commercials.
8:28
The silence after we turned off the lights at night.
8:35
It used to be a comfortable silence.
8:41
A silence that was full of everything we didn't need to say.
8:49
And then, slowly, it became a silence that was empty.
8:57
A vacuum where a conversation should have been.
9:04
When did that happen?
9:07
When did we stop filling the quiet and just start letting it grow?
9:17
Like a weed, choking everything else out.
9:23
No.
9:23
It goes back further.
9:26
The fight was a symptom.
9:30
The silence was the disease.
9:34
But what was the cause?
9:37
Where did we get infected?
9:41
I have to go back.
9:44
Before the house.
9:46
Before the promotions.
9:49
Before we became these… responsible, tired adults who forget curry and build alibis.
10:02
I found it.
10:03
I think.
10:04
It's not a big moment.
10:08
It’s not a proposal or a grand gesture.
10:13
It's a Tuesday.
10:16
In our first apartment.
10:19
The one with the rattling radiator and the window that looked out onto a brick wall.
10:31
It was raining.
10:33
One of those autumn downpours that feels like the sky is ending.
10:43
We were broke.
10:45
Utterly, hopelessly broke.
10:49
We had about seven dollars between us until Friday.
10:56
We couldn't go out.
10:59
We couldn't order in.
11:02
The TV was broken.
11:05
And you… you started pulling all the cushions off the couch.
11:13
You grabbed the sheets from the bed, the spare blankets from the closet, and you started building a fort.
11:29
A ridiculous, sprawling, structurally unsound pillow fort in the middle of our tiny living room.
11:43
I told you you were insane.
11:47
And you just grinned at me, with that lopsided smile you had back then, the one that made me feel like I was the only person in the world.
12:07
You said, "Insanely brilliant." We crawled inside with a flashlight and a bottle of two-dollar wine.
12:22
We spent the next five hours in there.
12:27
We read to each other from a dog-eared copy of a book we’d found in a free library box.
12:40
Your voice, low and steady, mixing with the sound of the rain against the glass.
12:52
The smell of old fabric and cheap wine and damp air.
12:59
And nothing else mattered.
13:03
There were no bills to pay.
13:07
No careers to build.
13:10
No future to plan.
13:13
There was just the tiny, flickering world we had made for ourselves.
13:23
Just us.
13:24
In the dark.
13:26
Keeping each other safe from the storm.
13:31
That was it, wasn't it?
13:35
That was the foundation.
13:38
That was the thing we were supposed to protect.
13:45
Not the bank account, not the social calendar, not the perfect-looking life.
13:56
That feeling.
13:58
The feeling of being two people against the world, building a shelter out of nothing but blankets and imagination.
14:15
And I look at you now, standing by the door with your car keys in your hand, telling me not to make this hard.
14:31
And I realize the truth.
14:34
You're not that boy anymore.
14:39
And maybe I'm not that girl.
14:43
Somewhere along the way, we walked out of the fort and forgot how to build it again.
14:55
That’s what I’m mourning.
14:59
Not the man who just left.
15:02
I’m mourning the boy who knew how to build a fort in the rain.
