3/30/25 The Quiet Exit

Some goodbyes are life changing. They happen in an instant: a final handshake, a last look, a quiet closing of the door. But their impact echoes through your life long after that moment has passed. Such a farewell rearranges the architecture of your soul in ways you never expected. It shuts certain doors within you even as it forces others wide open, altering the entire map of your heart.

One door, once full of light, now swings shut with resolute finality: the door of your willingness to ever invest yourself so deeply again. In the aftermath of that shattering goodbye, you simply cannot imagine pouring that much of your heart into another person. Not when every corner of your being still reverberates with the absence of that person. No substitute could fill that exact space, no new face can match the irreplaceable shape of their memory.

And more than that, you remember all too well what came of giving yourself so completely. You remember how it all fell apart. How a whole world you built with them collapsed into rubble and dust, every hope and tender moment reduced to nothing. With that vision of ruin etched into you, the thought of rebuilding such a world with someone new feels not only impossible, but painfully pointless.

Yet even as that once hopeful door closes, another door silently opens. It’s the exit door; the door you now hold open for anyone and everyone. In the new hollow quiet of your life, you find yourself standing guard by this open portal, a silent soldier who has learned the hardest way that anyone who wants to leave should be free to go. You learn to hold it open yourself, ushering people gently out without protest.

Gone is the urge to beg for someone to stay; gone is the fear of loneliness that once gripped you. In its place is a strange calm. You are prepared to say goodbye to anyone at any time, no matter who they are. The part of you that once would have fought desperately to keep someone from walking away is quiet now. In the vacuum left by that life-changing farewell, a cool aloofness rushes in to fill the space.

This aloofness becomes your armor and your cage all at once. It wraps around your heart like a thick fog, muffling the pain of loss but also dimming the color of every new connection. You keep every relationship at arm’s length, as if everyone in your life is already halfway out the exit. You watch friends, lovers, even family, with a detached gaze; appreciating their presence, perhaps, but never quite touching them with your soul. Deep down, you have accepted a stark truth: every bond is fragile, every connection transient. If even that one great love could disintegrate into nothingness, what hope do smaller attachments have?

In this quiet resignation lies a hint of relief. You tell yourself that by not holding anyone too close, you will never have to feel that devastation again. It is a quiet kind of nihilism; an understanding that since everything ultimately fades, it is easier to let go from the start than to hold on and be hurt when the end arrives. After all, if all things inevitably turn to dust, why cling so tightly to them in the first place?

So you keep the exit door open, always. Through it drifts a cold breeze of solitude, but you prefer its chill to the destructive storm of another heartbreak. In the emptiness that goodbye left behind, you have built a sanctuary of detachment. It is a lonely peace, a life in muted colors.

You stand in the corridor of your heart, one door forever locked behind you and another permanently ajar ahead of you. And there you remain: a quiet figure holding the door, ready at any moment to let anyone walk out of your life. There is a kind of tragic comfort in this arrangement. No new loss can surprise you now; no departure can truly shatter you when, in truth, you have been expecting it all along.

پھر کوئی آیا دل زار نہیں کوئی نہیں

راہرو ہوگا کہیں اور چلا جائے گا

ڈھل چکی رات بکھرنے لگا تاروں کا غبار

لڑکھڑانے لگے ایوانوں میں خوابیدہ چراغ

سو گئی راستہ تک تک کے ہر اک راہ گزار

اجنبی خاک نے دھندلا دیئے قدموں کے سراغ

گل کرو شمعیں بڑھا دو مے و مینا و ایاغ

اپنے بے خواب کواڑوں کو مقفل کر لو

اب یہاں کوئی نہیں کوئی نہیں آئے گا