Tirtha Writes

On why uncertainty lingers longer than loss.

We speak of letting go as though it follows the part after certainty – after betrayal, after clarity, after something unmistakably fractures. Yet some of the most difficult goodbyes emerge without any such rupture. They are born of ambiguity: relationships that never fully materialised, yet never definitively ended. In these liminal spaces, uncertainty does not dilute attachment; it intensifies it. When the justification for leaving remains indistinct, the mind compensates by constructing possibility – and possibility, unlike reality, resists closure and is far more difficult to mourn. This is where ambiguity becomes psychologically corrosive.

This mental loop lies at the heart of the Could Have, Couldn’t Have dilemma. You let go, and initially the decision feels rational, even necessary. After all, you walked away from inconsistency, from ambiguity, from unclear intentions. Yet over time, this planned certainty erodes. The mind begins to rehearse alternate outcomes: what could have existed if you had acted differently, what could have happened if they did something else. You question if staying is the true testament to building lasting relationships with depth, leaving you suspended between what you know is right and what merely seems right. 

What follows is not immediate regret, but prolonged unrest. This non-closure, this unclear ending hurts more because the mind is trapped in a loop of what could have been – a meticulously constructed vision of a life that existed only in projection. Deprived of a definitive ending, the brain resists moving on, returning repeatedly to imagined scenarios rather than real experiences for that same dopamine hit. Unlike clear breakups, where pain eventually gives way to acceptance, ambiguity sustains attachment by keeping the narrative unfinished. What lingers is not loss, but the persistent temptation to rewrite the past and reconsider the choice that ended it.

The solution? Not detachment. But acceptance. Not the forced indifference we mistake for resilience, but an acknowledgement of reality as it was, not what it could’ve been. Acceptance requires resisting the urge to keep renegotiating the past, to stop treating ambiguity as a puzzle, that with enough reflection, might finally yield clarity. It is the decision to stop romanticising uneven potential and to recognise that uncertainty was the final answer, not a stepping stone towards it. 

Learning to trust the choice you made means learning to sit with unanswered questions. It is the quiet work of believing that a decision can be sound even without concrete evidence, that leaving can be an act of care rather than abandonment. Choosing yourself is not about certainty; it is about faith in the version of you who knew staying would cost more than leaving, even if you never fully understand why. 

Maybe letting go isn’t about knowing you made the right choice. Maybe it’s about choosing yourself even when the answer never comes.