5. Ironically, 2020 Ended and I Really Broke Up

Over half a year ago, I wrote about breaking up with myself. My lifestyle was killing me, making me miserable. It was revealing when others also messaged me their personal stories. I appreciate you all for reading, and I had felt motivated that I wasn't alone.

Little did I know I was about to face life a whole other way when my ex decided to call it quits.

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Sobbing and feeling lost, my mind could not stop -- What was, I, to do now that he left me? Who would love me? How do I tell my family, who I had finally opened up to about my relationship? 

I have no one. 

But I tried so hard! 

I'm figuring it out, so how could he leave now? 

Wasn't I enough, even through my worst days? Wasn't this supposed to be my partner, whom I could share life with? What the hell just happened?

This isn't true.

Yet it all happened; clear as day, he chose to walk away. 

Told me I was great. Told me sorry. Told me we had a lot of memories. 

And slammed the door.

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So what do you do when someone decides to back out of your life? Do you let them go silently? Do you scream, and yell, out of anger? Do you wish them the best? Or plead them to stay? I would say one does not know until faced with that reality. 

All I can say about that moment was that there was no way I could have known I would be okay, standing on my own two feet, as I always have, eight months later.

I could give you all the reasons that bolted through my mind about why things ended like maybe we got too comfortable. 

With comfort, life comes around and starts handing out hardships, growth, and change. It knocks on your front door to remind you that complacency isn't okay. It forces you to look at your relationships with others, and most importantly, the one you have with yourself. And if you don't learn the lesson, I guarantee it'll keep knocking until you have to open the door to receive the message. And even then, it might knock a few more times to see if you remember your lesson.

Or maybe it was the idea I had of having a partner that would be enough, regardless of the amount of support we got from each other, whether tremendous or none at all.

So I thought this is it. 

Maybe love is sacrificing, and accepting them for who they are. 

And I still wholly believe love is that, and more. I just didn't know that I had been lonely for so long that I didn't even realize I had surrounded myself with unloving people. So when I was trying not to drown, I was with people who actually tied the rocks to my ankles and witnessed my descent.

I asked myself for so many days and nights what I did wrong. What did I do for God or whatever life force to punish me so?

I thought I was doing better. I had left friendships that loved me as a yes-woman or thrived from codependency. I guess I still hadn't quite learned my lesson.

So that's what I have finally come to realize from him walking away from me. I had traces of a yes-woman. I gave my all to my work, relationship, family, friends -- and none to myself. So when I lost them -- what else do I have to give?

So I cried. I cried to my parents. To my brother. To my friends. On drives to work. On drives home. And yet nowhere felt like home. I felt trapped in the middle of the COVID quarantine, with nowhere for me to go to pass my feelings. And if any place was open, we had gone to. I didn't know I could walk in a Target and feel like the world was spinning around me like no one understood how broken I felt. How could I even go back to all the places we went to? So I didn't. I just wrote and wrote and wrote. 

And when I got nightmares and couldn't sleep, only sleeping for two to three hours a night, I'd stay up and write. I'd talk to my brother until we were exhausted. 

The crazy thing was, I still hoped for him to come back.

I had no choice. My days had to be filled, no longer with him. So I began to fill it with me. I worked out, did my skincare, wrote, watched hours of podcasts, read self-help books, played the broken music of my heart.

It wasn't until a few months ago, I finally felt stronger and able to pick myself up. I can actually say now that I'm glad he left because I was a flower waiting to bloom. I am three-dimensional: I love being a homebody AND going out. I love laughing AND being loud AND I'm shy. I love working out AND eating. I don't have to quiet parts of me because someone else thinks it's too much. I can do it all and more, which as Matthew Hussey calls it, are unique pairings.

I forgot all the life I had inside of me. I forgot how beautiful the world looks even with all the pain in the world. The pain does not make up for all the joy we also get to experience in life.

Unfortunately, when certain people come into our lives, whether romantic or platonic, they just don't have the capacity to fully love us because we don't fully love ourselves. So now that I am in love with myself, I find that life is painted in brushstrokes. We need periods of color, blended together, to create magic. Yet, those periods where the brush does not hit the paper, when there's no color to fill, are the most important.

The blanks and silences in between are what makes life challenging and worthwhile.