#dayswithoutyou

It's been a year since you broke my heart. It's been a year of mourning and getting up to survive every day. I thought I would never recover from the emotional trauma. But I think my wounds are almost healed. I have realized my worth and I realized that what you did to me, I didn't deserve that pain.

For so many nights, I used to beg the Lord to give you back to me but there came a time that I stopped doing that. I stopped praying for you to come back into my life because I have realized that I deserve better. I cried one day in the shower because a thought came into my mind. Maybe the reason why God allowed this to happen to me is because there's something better waiting for me. That for all the pain that I went through, there was something good coming my way.

I used to believe that there were so many Universes for you and I.

There was the one where we held it together. The one where we stuck around, worked it out, ironed out our heartbreaks and forgave one another for it all.

There was the one where there was nothing to forgive – where we grew up as slowly as we needed to, never had to turn against each other, didn’t have greater ambitions or wandering eyes or weary, mismatched hopes clasped too tightly to our chests. One where everything happened the way it was supposed to.

There was the one where it was simpler, easier, pure. The one where we wanted the same things, laughed at the same jokes, loved each other’s families as if they were our own. Where my ambitions didn’t push you out of the picture and where your insipid lack of confidence didn’t tear us apart at the seams. In that Universe, we have cats. I seem like more of a cat person in that Universe.

I have driven myself mad over the years, mapping out all of these Universes for you and I. If-only this. What-if-I’d that. Tracing and trailing through our history, there are so many moments where our galaxies split in half. Where our stars realigned and our planets shifted swiftly and we found ourselves on wildly different courses than the ones we should have taken.

But we don’t live in any of those Universes.

We live in this one, the one where we lost each other.

And this has been the hardest Universe to swallow.

Out of all of all possible Universes, we landed in the one that broke us. The one where two halves did not make a whole and every molehill turned into a mountain. This is the Universe where in ten hundred thousand tiny ways, we were wrong for each other. It’s the one where we’re always going to be.

I think that so many lovers get those alternate Universes, where they are happier and freer and more fulfilled by each other’s side. But I like to think we don’t get one. I like to think that no matter which roads we’d taken, which decisions we’d made, which errors of judgment we’d reversed, there isn’t a Universe out there that could possibly have saved us.

I want us to be that single glitch in the matrix. I want it to all be far out of our control.

Because the thing about loving you is that I’d have waded through an infinite number of Universes trying to find the one that’s right for us. The one that would have suited us, strengthened us, let us be the partners we needed to be for each other.

But there are too many galaxies out there. There are too many fractures, too many splinters, too many moments where the roads diverged and the manifestations of our choices split into ten thousand alternate lives. There are enough what-ifs out there for me to get lost in forever, and I don’t want to spend my time chasing our cosmos anymore.

I’m ready to come back to this Universe.

I’m ready to accept that there may not be another Universe out there for us. And maybe that’s okay.

There’s still Universe enough here for me.

This day exactly a year ago, the man I loved so much decided I wasn't worth it anymore and it crushed me and broke my world apart. The future I saw together with him vanished in just a blink of an eye. Everything turned to dust as he left, not once looking back. My soul was lost. Everything I was came crashing down. Giving everything to this man who just eventually changed his mind made me realize to never trust anyone with your whole heart because you never know that they will be the exact ones who'll break you to pieces when the time comes. But then, as I went through the phases of grief, I came to learn that pain is a part of life. No matter how unfair it is, no matter how we think we didn't deserve to go through it, once it's there, you only have 2 options. Either you let that pain eat you up or you feel it and learn how to move past it.

I used to let the grief take over my life. Eventually, I learned how to accept the way things are going, I learned that I can never turn back time and let the things go back to the way they used to be. I learned that I will never have any control over what the other person feels. I learned that the only thing I have a say and control over is how I'm going to react on how life turns out to be.

After a year of grieving over my failed relationship, I finally learned how to accept that it was never meant to be and that things will never go back to the way they were before. I accepted that God has other plans for me and that whatever those plans are, they are way better than what I had.

I finally learned how to say goodbye to all the memories I held on so hard. I finally learned to let him go slowly as each day went by.

I've made a handful of impulsive decisions over the year - quitting the freelancer life I’ve been dreaming of having since I found out I’m not cut out to be an engineer, leaving my home, my family and moving to a new country prematurely, and now getting inked. I chose the word “fearless” for my first ink because it symbolizes my battle. This heartache I’ve been going through got me to places I could only just imagine. And yes, I may have been through the lowest of lows but getting through them made me think that I could weather the odds coming my way. As what Taylor Swift said, “Fearless is not the absence of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. It’s FEARLESS to have faith that someday things will change. FEARLESS is having the courage to say goodbye to someone who only hurts you, even if you can’t breathe without them. Letting go is FEARLESS. Then, moving on and being alright…That’s FEARLESS too. “ And that just resonated deep within me that it was no doubt at all that my first tattoo should be this word.

It’s been a hell of a ride since that night a year ago. But I’ve been doing okay now. So I hope this is one of the last letters I’ll be writing regarding you. I’m going to be okay, love. Wherever you are, I hope you're happy. I hope you are well and healthy. I finally know how to say goodbye now. Goodbye, love, I wish you well.

Did you know what drew me to you? It was that one moment 5 years ago when I asked you what your motives were in pursuing me. And you told me that you promised yourself that you won't go into a relationship if the end goal was not for marriage. You exact words were, "para unsa pa man ang uyab kung dili minyuan". And that's when the barriers I put in my heart started to melt. I admired how honest you were with your feelings. I admired how you've already considered me to be a part of your future in that moment when I still don't even know who you were.

Thinking about it now, maybe you did mean everything that you've said back then. And maybe, after years of being with me, you realized I was not the person you wanted to be with your whole life. Maybe you saw something lacking in me that you pushed me out of the future you were planning. Maybe I was not enough for you that's why when you envisioned your future, I wasn't there with you anymore. I was opted out, I was omitted, I was unworthy to be in the future you're dreaming and that's why you needed to leave me to pursue that future you saw.

For months, I've been wrecking my brain, thinking about the things I did wrong. Thinking about what changed your mind about me. Is it the way I spoke? Is it the way I acted? Is it the way I dressed? Is it because I became too fat now? Is it because of my body hair? Is it because of my dark underarms? Is it because of how heavy I have become? Is it because of my fat arms and my fat thighs? Is it because of my pimples and acne scars? Is it because of my smell? Do I smell? It is because of my career choices? Is it because of my financial situation? Is it because of my frequent mood swings? Is it because of my impatience or my temper? Is it because I've become clingy? It is because I've become a nagger? Is it because of my unfiltered tongue?

Everything resurfaced. I've been facing every single insecurity I have and it's damaging my core, my health, my being. This breakup has been eating me up and I have no choice but to face it even though it's killing me. I never knew I'd be like this. I never thought I'd be this destroyed over losing someone.