Dealing with a breakup.

I didn’t realise how loud silence could be until the messages stopped. No good mornings. No updates. No comfort at the end of the day. Just me—and the weight of everything unsaid.

After the breakup, I expected sadness. I expected tears. But I didn’t expect the emptiness. I didn’t expect to feel like a shell of myself, or how strange it would feel to not have someone there who had become part of my daily rhythm.

The Loneliness

Loneliness after a breakup isn’t just about missing someone. It’s missing the shared routines—talking about the small things, knowing someone’s out there who gets your weird habits, your moods, your laugh.

I didn’t just lose them—I lost my sense of home. Because, for a while, they became my world. My whole life began to revolve around them. I didn’t see it then, but now I realise how much of that came from low self-esteem. I poured everything into them, hoping it would be enough to keep us together—because I didn’t believe I was enough on my own.

Suddenly, I found myself in rooms full of people and still feeling like I was floating, disconnected. I smiled in conversations, but inside, I felt invisible. The person who once made me feel grounded wasn’t there—and that left me feeling unanchored.

The Emptiness

Some days, I couldn’t cry. Not because I was okay, but because I felt numb. There’s a strange kind of grief that comes when you realise you’re not just mourning the relationship—you’re mourning the future you imagined.

The dinners, the jokes, the “one day we’ll…” conversations. All gone.

I’d go about my day—work, eat, scroll—but it felt mechanical. Like I was just existing, not really living. The emptiness crept into everything: music, memories, even the clothes I wore around them.

And then there were the dreams.

Even after it was over—after the calls stopped, after we’d said all there was to say—they kept showing up in my sleep.

In dreams, we were still together. Laughing. Talking. Making plans. And for a few seconds after waking up, I forgot we weren’t.

Then reality would hit all over again. And it felt like losing them twice—once in real life, and again in my own mind.

Trying to Cope (and Sometimes Failing)

I tried everything.

Journaling. Walks. Distractions. I deleted messages. Re-downloaded and deleted dating apps. I kept telling myself I needed to “move on” even when I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Sometimes I stayed up too late. Sometimes I overshared with people who couldn’t hold space for me. Sometimes I said I was okay when I wasn’t—because I didn’t want to feel like a burden.

Healing isn’t pretty. And it isn’t always forward-moving.

What’s Helping (Even Just a Little)

What’s helped most are the small, quiet things.

Sitting in the sun. Writing about my feelings, even if I never read them again. Listening to sad songs until they didn’t sting as much. Letting myself cry. Letting myself not cry.

I stopped trying to “fix” the pain and instead began to just witness it. I told myself: this hurts because it mattered. That reminder softened the self-judgment.

And slowly, I’m starting to reconnect with myself. The version of me that existed before the relationship. The parts of me that are mine alone.

Still Healing, Still Here

I won’t pretend I’ve figured it all out.

There are still moments that hit out of nowhere—a memory, a dream, a voice that sounds like theirs. I still wake up some days with a heaviness I can’t explain.

But I’m learning that heartbreak isn’t something to rush through. It’s something to sit with, to honour, to learn from.

And most importantly—this sadness isn’t permanent. Neither is the loneliness.

I’m still healing. But I’m still here.