Moving on means mourning yourself too
Or, a funeral for a self that doesn’t exist anymore
We’re back, baby! Sort of. I appreciate everyone who has reached out to check if I’m OK (I am!) — and then proceeded to shout at me to not let this space die. So I won’t. I’m writing and interviewing again, so you can expect to see more Brown Bodies in your inbox soon! But, for this week, I’m handing over to
— one of the people who has been yelling at me to write again!Nishad is the author of one of my favourite Substacks,
, which I’ve been reading for a while (and have been quoted in a couple of times!). Shockingly, we hadn’t met until a couple of weeks ago when a mutual friend introduced us. I’ll let Nishad tell the story from here.Moving on means mourning yourself too
Or, a funeral for a self that doesn’t exist anymore
Anisah and I met for the first time a couple of weeks ago and, unsurprisingly, hit it off. It was one of those rare sunny days in London, so we scrapped our dinner reservation and wandered through Holland Park, smoothies in hand. The conversation unfolded slowly; it was the kind that loops and meanders, touching on childhood, diaspora, faith, family, love, sex, and the strangeness of reaching your thirties and still not knowing how to grieve properly.
Somewhere along the way, we started talking about heartbreak. Not the cinematic, SRK-inspired kind that brown bodies like ours are told to crave, but the quieter, duller, harder-to-name kind. I found myself saying something I hadn’t said out loud before: that breakups, over time, become less about losing the other person, and more about losing the version of yourself you were with them. That when a relationship ends, it’s not just the couple that dissolves — it’s the you they brought to life. And that version never returns.
“Write that for Brown Bodies,” she said. “I’m serious.”
So here I am, trying to translate a feeling that’s already hard enough to live with, let alone write about.
Let me be clear from the outset: this isn’t a piece about longing in the usual sense. I’ve moved on — at least to the extent any of us can move on from something that once felt like home. I no longer replay old arguments in the shower. I don’t think about her daily. I’m not haunted. But I do feel the absence… not of her, but of me. The version of me that lived in that specific love.
No one prepares you for that part. When the goodbye is done, when the grief begins to fade and the noise dies down, you realise there’s no funeral for the self that left with them. And I think it deserves one. Because one of the strangest things about breakups is that, as time goes on, people expect a clean slate. Like once you’ve made a decision, once you’ve said your piece, once you’ve moved on, you shouldn’t feel anything anymore. As if you can start fresh and live as though what happened hadn’t happened. But it doesn’t work like that.
Well-meaning friends will say things like, “She wasn’t good for you,” or “You deserve better.” They say it to comfort you, of course, and I get the urge. God, I wish I could believe that too. It would be so much easier if I could reduce it to that. But what they don’t realise is that sometimes, in trying to help you move on, they end up erasing the whole thing. Not just her, but the life you lived inside that love. The you that existed in it. The one who believed. And that version doesn’t deserve to be dismissed just because the story didn’t have the ending you hoped for.
I find myself saying, “It was my decision too.” Not to play the strong man or to seem emotionally evolved, but because I need people to know it mattered. That I wasn’t some deluded fool inside a house of cards that someone else swatted away. That it was real. That it meant something.
I think that’s why we often defend our exes — not because they were flawless (though there was a time we believed they were), but because the relationship represented a truth. A moment. A point in time. A chapter. A version of ourselves. To dismiss them outright is to question the choices you once stood by. The meals you cooked. The trips you made. The time you gave. The self you offered.
In many ways, we’re not defending them. We’re defending the figment. The shared myth. The us we built. And we need it to have mattered. Because if it didn’t then what were we doing all that time? Who were we?
There’s a concept in psychology called ‘narrative identity’. It suggests that we shape our sense of self not just through experience, but by the stories we tell ourselves about those experiences. We turn our choices, our relationships, and our mistakes into plot points. We edit and arrange the chaos so it makes sense — or at least feels like it does. And love, especially long-term love, becomes a defining chapter in that story.
When it ends, it’s not just the plot that changes, but the narrator.
You’re no longer the person you were in that chapter. And the disorientation that follows isn’t only emotional but existential, bringing about questions like: Who am I if I’m no longer someone’s partner? How do I make sense of myself when the compass I once used to navigate the world is suddenly gone?
I think of ambiguous loss: grief without closure, grief that has no grave. The kind of mourning we do for people who are still alive but who are not ours anymore. Romantic breakups often fall into that category. There’s no funeral, no ceremony, just silence and an empty space.
That’s why I still catch myself defending her. Not because I want her back. But because the architecture of our relationship — that version of life I lived inside — deserves protection. It was a shelter once, even if it eventually collapsed.
There’s a quote I come back to often from bell hooks: “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
And when love ends, the actions stop. The gestures, the care, the dailiness of it all — they all disappear. And in their place is an eerie silence, not just from them, but from the parts of you that were in conversation with that love.
So moving on isn’t really about another person. Not really.
It’s about that pause.
The after.
The version of me that no longer exists.
That’s what I meant in the park chatting to Anisah. What we grieve after love isn’t always the person — it’s the particular version of you they unlocked. The one who cooked that kind of breakfast. Who laughed a little differently. Who spoke with a certain amalgamation of gestures and cadence shaped by your shared languages. Who believed, with an unguarded heart, in something lasting.
And when they go, so does he.
Maybe there’s no ritual for that. But maybe this is it.
Not a dirge nor a confession. Just a small eulogy to the version of me who no longer lives here.
A huge thank you to
for writing this week’s Brown Bodies. One of my fave birthday gifts this year!You can subscribe to his Substack below. I won’t say too much, but he’s about to embark on a new journey and the writing to come out of it will resonate with anyone interested in India’s history and its diaspora — I’ve had a preview and it’s excellent!
And if you’re not already subscribed to this newsletter and want to hear more about love and sex in the South Asian diaspora, drop your email below. It’s free!
 | A guest post by
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This was articulated so beautifully, and captures the reality of moving on.