I'm Still Learning How to Breathe Without You....

There are heartbreaks you cry over for a few days, delete the pictures, stop checking your phone, and eventually move on from.

And then there are the ones that completely rearrange you.

The kind that make your chest physically hurt.

The kind that make you wake up for a split second forgetting what happened, only for reality to hit you all over again.

The kind where you keep reaching for your phone because your brain still expects their name to be there.

That is the kind of heartbreak I just went through.

And I don’t think I was prepared for how much it would hurt.

I wasn’t prepared for the silence.

I wasn’t prepared for how loud memories become when the person attached to them is suddenly gone.

I wasn’t prepared to question every conversation, every promise, every “I’m not going anywhere,” every moment that felt safe enough for me to finally put my guard down.

That might be the cruelest part of heartbreak.

It doesn’t only take the person.

It makes you question the reality you shared with them.

Was it real?

Did they mean it?

Did I imagine how close we were?

Did I love harder than they did?

Was I too much?

Was I not enough?

Could I have fixed it?

Should I have tried harder?

Those questions will eat you alive if you let them.

And I have let them, sometimes.

I have replayed things until they stopped sounding like memories and started sounding like evidence in a case I was building against myself.

Maybe if I had said this differently.

Maybe if I hadn’t been scared.

Maybe if I had given more space.

Maybe if I had needed less reassurance.

Maybe if I had been easier to love.

But grief has a way of making us search for a reason we can control.

Because admitting that sometimes you can love someone with everything in you and still lose them is terrifying.

I loved deeply.

That is the truth.

I cared deeply.

I believed in something deeply.

And right now, I am paying the price of having meant every damn bit of it.

There are days when I’m angry.

Days when I miss them so much it feels embarrassing.

Days when I want answers.

Days when I want to pretend none of it ever mattered.

Days when I’m convinced I’m doing better, only for one song, one place, one memory, or one stupid notification to knock the air out of me again.

Healing is rude like that.

It does not move in a straight line.

It does not care that yesterday was a good day.

It does not care that you deleted the messages.

It does not care that you told everyone, “I’m okay.”

Sometimes the grief comes back anyway.

But I’m starting to understand something.

Missing someone does not automatically mean they are meant to come back.

Loving someone does not mean I have to lose myself to prove it.

And being heartbroken does not mean I will feel this way forever.

That last one is the hardest for me to believe right now.

Because when you are in the middle of heartbreak, it feels permanent.

You cannot imagine a version of your life where their absence does not hurt.

You cannot imagine hearing their name and feeling nothing.

You cannot imagine loving again without comparing someone new to what you lost.

But I know there was a version of me before this person.

And somewhere underneath all this grief, there is going to be a version of me after them too.

She might be softer in some places.

Harder in others.

More careful.

Hopefully wiser.

But she will exist.

Right now, I’m not trying to rush to become her.

I’m trying to let myself grieve.

To admit that this hurt me.

To stop pretending that being strong means acting unaffected.

Because I was affected.

I lost something I genuinely wanted.

I lost someone I pictured in parts of my future.

I lost conversations I thought I would get to keep having.

Plans I thought we would eventually make real.

A version of my life I had already started quietly building in my head.

And grieving that does not make me pathetic.

It makes me human.

So maybe this chapter isn’t about “getting over it.”

Maybe it’s about getting through it.

One morning at a time.

One night where I don’t check their page.

One song I reclaim.

One memory that stops feeling like a wound.

One moment where I laugh and realize I wasn’t thinking about them.

One piece of myself I pick back up.

Until eventually, I’m not learning how to live without them anymore.

I’m just living.

And if you are reading this with your own shattered heart, I hope you know this:

You do not have to pretend it did not matter just because it ended.

You are allowed to mourn what you thought it could become.

You are allowed to miss them and still know you deserve peace.

You are allowed to love someone and still choose yourself.

And you are allowed to have absolutely no idea how you are going to survive this heartbreak yet.

For now, just survive today.

That is enough.

As for me?

I’m still hurting.

I’m still missing.

I’m still untangling the love from the loss.

But somewhere underneath all of it, I’m still here.

And for the first time in a while, I think that has to matter too.

Until next time,

the girl behind the chaos. 🖤