I Kept Jake’s Chat Pinned Even After I Blocked Him

I promised myself I wouldn’t check Jake’s last seen again.

WhatsApp still opened on his chat anyway.

“Jake 💬” sat at the top of my screen, pinned, like a wound I refused to clean. His display picture was gone. No status. No “online” or “typing…”. Just that dull grey circle staring back at me.

I had already blocked him.

But I hadn’t unpinned the chat.

That was the part I never told my friends. To them I was the strong one. The girl who finally left. The one who said things like, “Once I’m done, I’m done.”

I wasn’t done. I was just quiet about it.

My name is Emily, by the way. But for months, I felt more like “Jake’s girlfriend” than my own person.

The last real conversation we had started with four words:

“Can we talk later?”

It was 11:47 pm. I had been typing a paragraph about how I felt ignored, how Jake had gone from “good morning, gorgeous” texts to taking eight hours to reply “yeah”.

I watched my own typing dots appear and disappear as I edited my message again and again.

Too harsh.

Too soft.

Too dramatic.

Too scared.

Then Jake messaged.

Jake: Can we talk later? I’m out with friends.

I stared at the screen.

I had spent twenty-three minutes preparing to be honest. He had spent three seconds dismissing it.

I deleted my paragraph.

Emily: Sure

I added a smiley I didn’t mean.

He didn’t message later.

He messaged at 3:12 am.

Jake: Sorry I knocked out

Long day.

No “What were you saying?”

No “Are you okay?”

No curiosity, no concern. Just Jake’s usual lazy charm holding the door half open, expecting me to walk back in.

And I did.

I always did.

The night everything broke, there wasn’t some big movie scene. No dramatic shouting, no cheating confession, no public breakup.

It was a screenshot.

My friend Chloe sent it with no context.

A cropped Instagram story. Jake’s hand on a table. Another hand over it, with red nail polish I didn’t recognize. Same brown bracelet I had gifted him. Same watch I had stared at so many times while waiting for him to show up.

Her caption: “Always worth the wait.”

My stomach went cold before my brain caught up.

I tapped the tag. Jake’s profile.

The story wasn’t on his page. Close Friends? Second account? I didn’t know. I just knew one thing clearly: I wasn’t the only one waiting for him.

Maybe I never was.

“Who is she?” I typed to Chloe.

She replied in seconds.

Chloe: Her name’s Lauren. I think they work together.

Chloe: I’m so sorry, Em.

Lauren.

A simple name attached to a simple screenshot that made my whole version of Jake fall apart.

I didn’t text him. I didn’t call. I just put my phone face down on the bed and lay next to it like someone had died.

In a way, someone had.

The version of Jake I had built in my head. The Jake who was “just busy”. The Jake who was “not good at texting”. The Jake who “needed time”.

He didn’t need time.

He needed options.

I had been one of them.

Blocking him was quiet.

No announcement. No dramatic status. No long “I deserve better” speech.

I opened WhatsApp.

Tap on “Jake 💬”.

Tap on the three dots.

Tap on “Block”.

My thumb hovered for half a second. My heart raced like I was doing something wrong.

Then I tapped.

A small box appeared:

Block Jake?

You will no longer receive calls or messages from this contact.

Yes.

The moment after was strangely empty. No feeling of victory. No instant freedom. Just silence.

His chat stayed at the top of my list. Pinned. Blocked. Still there.

I told myself I would unpin it in a week.

I didn’t.

Days passed. The little mute icon next to his name felt like a joke. There was nothing to mute. Only messages I was refusing to receive.

But my brain still invented messages that didn’t exist. Fake buzzing in my pocket. A “typing…” that never showed up. A call that never came.

Midnight became the worst time.

I’d open the chat and scroll up.

Back to the voice notes where Jake’s voice sounded softer. Back to the messages where he said, “I don’t talk to anyone the way I talk to you, Em.” Back to the first time he called me “home.”

I knew now that he probably said similar things to other girls. Maybe to Lauren. Maybe to someone before her. Maybe to someone after me.

Didn’t matter.

It mattered to me because I had believed every word.

One night, weeks later, I did something small that hurt more than blocking him.

I changed his contact name.

For months, he had been saved as “My Jake ❤️”. Before that, just “Jake❤️”. Before that, “Jake Miller” when everything was still new and bright and exciting.

I opened his contact.

Backspace.

“My Jake ❤️” became just “Jake”.

Backspace.

“Jake” became “J”.

Backspace.

“J” became a single dot. Just “.”

I stared at the dot and laughed once. It sounded cracked.

It felt pathetic.

It felt symbolic.

It felt like I was trying to shrink him down to the size of the space he actually deserved to have in my life.

Something small.

Something not worth a whole heart.

Then I did something I had avoided from the start.

I long-pressed the chat.

“Unpin.”

“Jake 💬” slid down, swallowed by work groups, family chats, dumb memes, and random OTP messages.

For the first time in months, my WhatsApp opened without his name staring back at me.

I didn’t feel powerful. I didn’t feel healed.

I felt… a little lighter.

Healing wasn’t fireworks. It was small admin tasks of the heart.

Block.

Rename.

Unpin.

Delete screenshots.

Remove favorite photos.

Stop checking who views your stories.

Stop posting sad quotes hoping one specific person understands.

Stop writing essays to a man who replies with “yeah”.

Last week, out of nowhere, I got a message from an unknown number.

Unknown: Hey. It’s Jake.

You really blocked me everywhere? That’s cold

I stared at the screen.

For once, my first instinct wasn’t to defend myself. It wasn’t to explain. It wasn’t to ask about Lauren, or that story, or why he thought this was funny.

My first instinct was… nothing.

Just tired.

I typed.

Emily: I finally believed what you showed me, not what you told me.

The three dots appeared.

Jake: Wow

Jake: You really changed

Jake: I miss the old you

I smiled at the screen, but it wasn’t a soft smile.

The “old me” would have written a whole paragraph. She would have apologized for his behavior. She would have tried to convince him she was worth choosing properly.

The “old Emily” kept his chat pinned even when he treated her like a backup plan.

The me holding the phone now did something different.

I deleted the chat.

Not blocked. Not muted. Not pinned.

Just gone.

Somewhere, Lauren might still be waiting for his half-hearted replies. Somewhere, another girl might be staring at his “last seen” at 2 am. Somewhere, his name will still sit at the top of someone’s chat list like a prize.

He will still be Jake.

He will still be someone’s almost.

He just won’t be mine anymore.

And if you’re reading this with someone’s chat pinned, someone who always has an excuse, someone who never really shows up—

I’m not judging you.

I know exactly how that feels.

I’m just here as Emily, the girl who finally unpinned “Jake 💬”, to tell you:

Your life doesn’t fall apart when you let go.

The version of you who waited for them does.

And that’s the part that needed to.