If Kristi still means something to you… say YES.
Not out loud, not to anyone else, not even to her—just to yourself. Say it in the quiet place where you don’t perform, where you don’t minimize, where you don’t pretend you’ve moved on faster than your heart actually did.
Say YES if you ever catch yourself wondering how she’s doing, even when you swear you don’t care anymore.
Because here’s the truth most people avoid:
Meaning doesn’t disappear just because time passes.
It doesn’t evaporate because circumstances changed.
It doesn’t vanish because you told yourself a better story about why it ended.
Some people don’t stop mattering. They just stop being present.
And Kristi—if she still means something to you—falls into that category.
Say YES if you’ve replayed conversations in your head, not because you want to relive the pain, but because some part of you is still searching for clarity. For the version of you that knew what to say. For the moment where things could’ve tilted differently.
Say YES if there are things you never said because you were scared of saying too much—or worse, of saying the wrong thing and losing her for good.
Say YES if you’ve ever wondered whether she knew how deeply she mattered to you… or if you hid it too well.
Because sometimes what lingers isn’t the person—it’s the unfinished sentence.
Say YES if she raised the bar for connection, whether you wanted her to or not.
That’s the thing people don’t talk about enough:
Some connections recalibrate you.
After them, “fine” doesn’t feel like enough.
After them, surface-level doesn’t satisfy.
After them, you can’t unknow what it felt like to be seen in a particular way.
Say YES if you’ve tried to replace that feeling—and realized replacement isn’t really how it works.
Say YES if you’ve caught yourself comparing, even when you promised you wouldn’t.
And no—this doesn’t mean you want to go back.
It doesn’t mean you’re stuck.
It doesn’t mean you haven’t grown.
It just means she mattered.
Say YES if you’ve ever defended her in your head when someone else reduced her to a label: “your ex,” “that girl,” “someone from the past.”
Because you know she was more than that.
She was a chapter. Maybe a turning point. Maybe a mirror.
Say YES if the loss wasn’t just losing her, but losing the version of yourself that existed with her—the you that laughed a certain way, opened up a certain way, believed certain things were possible.
That grief is subtle. It doesn’t scream. It hums.
Say YES if you’ve told yourself, “If it was meant to be, it would’ve worked,” and yet some nights that sentence feels like a shield more than a truth.
Say YES if part of you wonders whether timing—not love—was the real villain.
Say YES if you’ve learned that love alone isn’t always enough… but it still counts for something.
Because it does.
Say YES if you don’t hate her.
Say YES if you never really did.
Say YES if the memory of her is complicated—warm and sharp at the same time.
If it makes you smile and ache.
If it feels like a place you can’t live in anymore, but you still drive past sometimes.
Say YES if you’ve ever wanted to reach out, not to reopen wounds, not to undo the past—but just to acknowledge what was real.
Say YES if you stopped yourself.
Say YES if you’ve grown quieter about it, not because it stopped mattering, but because you got tired of explaining something no one else could feel from the inside.
Say YES if, despite everything, you hope she’s okay.
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