27/11/25

I’ve been wanting to write something for so many days, but I just haven’t been able to sit down and do it.

It’s been more than a month since we separated, but if I’m honest, long before that I was already falling apart every day.

I cried every single day, dropping into those completely out-of-control sobs, like someone was pulling my soul out of my body and throwing it into a fire to slowly burn.

Now I still cry every day.

It’s just no longer that hysterical explosion, but a quieter, longer kind of pain.

The tears suddenly surge up, but it feels like something is pressing on them, so they can only slide down my face in thin lines, one after another.

I’ve started practicing yoga; it makes me feel a little more grounded.

Lately I’ve been grabbing onto anything that might ground me: I force myself to go out, to hike, to climb, to dance, letting the pain in my muscles try to dull the pain in my heart.

I’ve fallen in love with going alone to this little independent cinema near my place. The sound and picture aren’t great, but to me, those two hours are like a tiny cave I can slip into, it’s just me and the story on the screen, and everything outside is shut out behind the door.

I haven’t really talked deeply about this breakup with most of many friends.

This time hurts too much.

I think it’s the most painful breakup I’ve ever had.

It hurts so much that I don’t know how to fit these words, or my thoughts, into any conversation.

Before, even when we were already covered in cracks, I still had fantasies, still had a kind of faith: if we both worked on ourselves, maybe we would come back.

During those ten days of vipassana, I fell apart every day and meditated every day, rehearsing in my mind, again and again, all the possible paths where we might find our way back to each other.

But when I came out, when we had that conversation, I realised: he had already, really, walked away.

I saw a naked, brutal fact:

The original “us” was already dead.

That sentence we once said “I hope we can find a way back to each other”, and all the “possible plans” I kept chewing on in silence during the retreat, were erased in the moment he said those few lines:

“I can’t generate love for you anymore.”

“I feel more resentment than love towards you.”

“I don’t feel things. I just feel empty.”

Just like that, clean and sharp, he denied the whole idea of “us”.

Sometimes I get angry.

Getting here was never just one person’s fault.

But why, when I was still holding on to hope, was he the one who pulled away?

Why was it that my hand was still reaching out, and he had already turned his back?

And yet I know I can’t force anything.

I don’t want to force him, and I don’t want to force a “we” that was already shattered.

All of this can only mean: he isn’t my person.

That’s all.

Even though I had once believed, with my whole heart, that he was.

And this “that’s all” is like a knife, stabbing the exact same place, day after day.

The pain in my heart is still savage.

For more than a month now, every single day, I can feel my heart being dug out inch by inch.

It’s not a single stab that kills you at once, but like some tool covered in barbs, slowly scraping, slowly tearing: sometimes it feels like one or two veins are being ripped out; sometimes it’s a small piece of the atrium being twisted off; sometimes I feel my whole heart being pulled out by the roots, and the hollow it leaves just gushes blood that never seems to stop.

We once had so much love: so real, so intense it felt like it might burn our bodies from the inside out;

we had so many nights of wanting each other;

so many plans for the future: about home, about cities, about language, about children, about what we would look like growing old together...

I know that on my own, I have always been able to cope.

I can take care of myself, I can navigate a lot of hard situations, I can open my heart and form new connections.

But every day there are still several moments when that feeling hits me again:

I am in his country.

I am here alone.

Without him.

I can clearly feel my heart going empty and aching again, like a piece of heart muscle with an incurable chronic disease, dying a little more every day.

I honestly can’t tell whether she’s already dead, or still twitching faintly, barely breathing.

In this period I’ve been talking a lot with two therapists.

And yet I still can’t really meditate: every time I close my eyes and start to breathe, it doesn’t take long before I feel dizzy, my chest tight, and then I’m crying so hard I can’t stop.

Lately in yoga class, I cry in almost every session.

I’m just doing a pose, and suddenly the tears start falling on their own. I simply can’t hold them back.

I’m not trying to turn this into a diary where I am this “poor me”.

I know how strong I am, and I know I’m walking on the right path.

Sometimes I can step outside myself and watch my emotions from a third-person viewpoint, like watching a storm.

I remind myself: “This was the right decision.”

I know that feelings will pass eventually, that they’ll retreat in waves like the tide.

I know that as long as I keep breathing and staying with myself, even if I’m breathing and crying at the same time, there will be a moment when I feel a little steadier again.

Sometimes, when I call my family or friends, I can truly feel so much love around me.

But there are still those moments.

Those sudden waves when I really can’t hold on to myself.

I can feel myself disappearing: my edges go blurry, my outline dissolves bit by bit, and it’s like I’m just melting away.