A MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT (How To Un-Love)

First Published in 2013Edited in 2026 ______________A full bottle of vodka. An almost-empty pack of cigarettes. One purple plastic cup. A lighter sitting beside a phone that had been unusually quiet all night. One blank page, a dying pen and a mind that had refused to shut down. My table was a strange meeting point between the old school and the new school. Pen and paper on one side. Phone and laptop on the other. The kind of table where heartbreak could easily become a WhatsApp status, a Notes app entry, or a 2 a.m. tweet nobody asked for. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke disappear into the room. It suddenly occurred to me that falling in love is almost as easy as lighting a cigarette. One spark, one moment, and before you know it, something is burning. But getting over love? That is a completely different assignment. Because nobody has invented a way to collect cigarette ashes, turn them back into tobacco, reform the cigarette, restore the fire and somehow convince the burnt matchstick that nothing ever happened. Yet that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to un-love. After spending so much time loving her, caring for her, putting her ahead of myself, finding new ways to make her smile and constantly reminding myself that she was worth the effort, I was suddenly being told to stop. “Move on.” “Forget her.” “Let it go.” “Find somebody else.” Different sentences. Same message. Get over it. And apparently, I was expected to wake up one morning and simply stop loving her. But how? Can you tell the rain not to fall because the ground is already wet? Can you tell your lungs to stop breathing because you are tired? Can you tell music not to sound beautiful because you are heartbroken? I had read enough about how to fall in love, how to maintain relationships and how to make someone fall for you. But nobody had written the manual for the other side. Nobody had written: HOW TO UN-LOVE SOMEONE YOU STILL LOVE. <h3>HOW DOES ONE UN-LOVE?</h3> So I started asking questions. How do you break love's hold? How do you escape something that has become part of your emotional operating system? How do you delete someone from your heart when your brain still remembers their number without needing to search your contacts? My friends had answers, of course. Friends always have answers to problems they are not personally experiencing. “Keep yourself busy.” Okay. But what happens when you are busy and your mind is still unemployed? “Stop thinking about her.” Brilliant. And while I am at it, should I also stop listening to music, stop sleeping, stop eating and deactivate my entire existence? “Find someone else.” That one always makes me laugh. As if human beings are apps. Delete one. Download another. Problem solved. But real love does not work like that. You cannot replace something genuine with a random distraction and call it healing. So I picked up my phone and decided to call five people. Maybe somebody, somewhere, had discovered the secret. Five calls. Five opinions. One question. How do I un-love? <h3>CALL ONE</h3> “Bro, just smoke something. You go forget everything.” I laughed. Apparently, my emotional crisis had become a pharmaceutical research project. — Kentro <h3>CALL TWO</h3> “Hmmm…” Silence. More silence. Then the call ended. Honestly, I think that was the most honest answer of the night. — DJ Sean <h3>CALL THREE</h3> “Same way you fell in love, na the same way you fall out of love.” Interesting. No manual. No tutorial. Just vibes. Then came another five minutes of advice I had already mentally deleted. — Demmy <h3>CALL FOUR</h3> “How do you un-love? Good question. I think you just disconnect. Stop communicating. Change your mindset. Emotion follows your thoughts eventually. If it was me, I’d probably apply silent treatment. But make no mistake, falling out of love is not easy.” There it was. The closest thing to an actual answer. — Skah D’IghoBaby <h3>CALL FIVE</h3> “You have plenty girls that want you, and you're sitting here asking me how to un-love one person? Find somebody who loves you and love her back.” Simple. Almost insulting. And probably the most practical. — Ibukun I dropped the phone on the table. Five calls. Five opinions. Zero solutions. Maybe there simply isn't a formula for un-loving. Love arrives without asking for permission, and perhaps it leaves the same way. Not when you demand it. Not when your friends tell you to move on. Not even when you decide that you are tired of hurting. It leaves when it is ready. And sometimes, unfortunately, it takes its sweet time. Then I remembered the oldest answer of them all. TIME. They call it the great healer. But time had done absolutely nothing for me that night. It didn't make me miss her less. It didn't make the memories disappear. It didn't suddenly make my heart understand what my brain had already accepted. I loved her. No. I love her. There is a difference. Because the past tense makes it sound finished. This wasn't finished. I didn't just love her body. I loved her mind. Her personality. Her madness. Her silence. Her presence. Her absence. The little things that made her her. And now I missed her with the same intensity with which I had loved her. Maybe that was the real problem. I wasn't grieving her death. She was still alive. I was grieving something else. Us. Not me. Not her. Me and her. WE. And perhaps that is one of the strangest forms of grief — losing a future you had already started imagining. I stared at the blank page. My eyes had become their own water supply. The bottle was almost empty. The cigarette pack was almost finished. My phone was still beside me. My heart was somewhere between “I'm fine” and “God, please help me.” I looked at my wrist. 11:59 PM. A minute to midnight. I dropped my head on the table. And somewhere between heartbreak and exhaustion… I slept. <h3>12:00 AM</h3> She was standing right in front of me. Beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes you temporarily forget every reason you were supposed to be angry. We had become friends again. Stronger friends. Time had apparently done what time does best. It had quietly repaired what I thought was permanently broken. The clock moved. The moment arrived. I had rehearsed the words a thousand times. Then I finally said them. “I LOVE YOU.” She laughed. Not the cute romantic laugh I had imagined. The kind of laugh that makes you immediately question every decision that brought you to that particular moment. Then she looked at me. “You're a really good friend.” Pause. “But I have a boyfriend.” My heart didn't break. It simply resigned. I couldn't remember what happened next. Maybe I disappeared. Maybe the earth opened. Maybe my soul quietly logged out. Then— I woke up. Back to reality. I stared at the ugly tabletop. For a few seconds, I couldn't tell whether I was relieved or disappointed. Then I remembered. It was a dream. Just another dream manufactured by an overworked mind, powered by heartbreak, vodka, cigarettes and too many unanswered questions. I opened my laptop and began typing. The previous night's thoughts slowly became paragraphs. Paragraphs became a story. The story became an article. And the article ended with one question. DONE. I saved it. Sent it. 6:39 AM. Time for coffee. Then my phone rang. I looked at the screen. It was her. And suddenly, every piece of confidence I had gathered overnight disappeared. I stared at the phone. Should I answer? Should I say the words? “I LOVE YOU.” Or should I finally ask the question that had kept me awake all night? “How do I un-love you?” Funny thing about love. Sometimes you spend the whole night trying to figure out how to forget someone… …and they call you the next morning. So here I am. Still confused. Still wondering. Still asking. How do I UN-LOVE?

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