Heartbreak diaries #1: The grief that came before goodbye

For every woman who broke while trying to hold it all together

I only cried in the day we ended.
And it was not the way you’d expect a woman to cry
when the fairytale unravels.
Because the ending didn’t happen all at once.
It was slow.
Invisible.
Insidious.

He had already, slowly, buried us
in the mornings he didn’t notice I hadn’t slept.
In the weeks I forgot what joy tasted like.
In the nights I lay next to someone
who only kissed the mask I wore to survive.

I lit candles for the future I once imagined —
the kids, the vows, the old age laughter
and watched the wax melt
into quiet disappointment.

The mourning came early
quiet and shapeless
like fog swallowing a city.
It began the day I stopped laughing out loud,
the day my hands shook opening the fridge
because even choosing food
felt impossible.

I was breaking.
From the inside out.
And I didn’t know how to ask for help
without sounding like a burden.
Even more than I was already feeling.
So I smiled.
And worked.
And posted.
And performed.

I cried endless tears
when I woke up in a house where my pain
was too loud to be loved,
where I had to shrink into productivity
just to be tolerated.
I learned how to swallow sobs
and turn them into invoices.
How to put makeup on grief
and perform being fine.
How to whisper I’m okay
with a knife in my chest.

Burnout isn’t just exhaustion.
It’s forgetting who you were
before you had to become efficient.

Anxiety isn’t just nervousness.
It’s a heartbeat that races when no one’s chasing you.
It’s trying to make coffee with shaking hands.
It’s collapsing on the floor
but still replying to emails.
It’s the silent scream
beneath your perfectly captioned Instagram post.

And depression…
god, depression is a thief.
It steals the color from your favorite sweater.
The melody from your favorite songs.
The hope from your spine.
The smile in your face.
It makes you feel like you’re the problem.
Like your pain is an inconvenience
that needs to be hidden
to keep being loved.

But love doesn’t ask you to hide.

He did.

And that’s when I started grieving.
While we still shared the same bed.
While we still made future plans.
While we still played pretend.

He wasn’t cruel.
He just wasn’t there.

Not in the way I needed.

He loved my light,
but abandoned me in my shadows.
He wanted my fire,
but not my ashes.
He admired my strength,
but flinched at my softness.

He said he loved me.
But only when I made sense.
When I was digestible.
When I wasn’t crying on the floor
because I had run out of strength
to keep up with a life
that was slowly killing me.

And he would just say
“Try harder”
“Wake up earlier”
“Sell more consistently”
“Get more clients”

He said he’d be there until the end of my days.
But he wasn’t even there at the end of my strength.
Not when my body gave out.
Not when my soul collapsed.
Not when I begged the universe for one fucking hand
to hold mine,
not to fix,
just to hold.

Instead,
I became the uninvited guest of my own suffering.
I was too much. Too fragile. Too tired.
Too burned out to be bright.
Too anxious to be pleasant.
Too human to be convenient.

So he left.
But not all at once.
First in pieces,
in excuses,
in football matches and boys’ nights,
in tournaments and reunions,
in always choosing somewhere
that wasn’t
me.

And I kept choosing him,
even when he didn’t choose me back.
Because I thought
that if I just kept smiling,
just kept trying,
just kept standing upright while drowning,
he would see me again —
see me the way he once did
when I wasn’t yet inconvenient.

But instead,
I disappeared in front of him.
Bit by bit.
Breath by breath.
Until I became someone even I didn’t recognize.

So no,
I didn’t cry too much
when he left.
Because I had already cried
every time I felt alone
in his presence.

The real heartbreak
was loving someone who only loved
the best version of me.
The profitable one.
The cheerful,
problem-free,
marketable dream,
the “powerpoint wife”.

But when I started to crumble,
he started to retreat.
And I started to understand
that real love doesn’t run
at the first sign of ruin.
It stays.
It listens.
It holds space
when there is nothing left to hold onto.

The night he left,
I exhaled for the first time in months.
A breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Relief mixed with sorrow.
Freedom tangled with ache.

Not because there was no love.
But because love,
real love,
does not disappear
when things stop being beautiful.
Specially when I was in hell
and still trying so fucking hard
to make it look painless and bearable.
When I using all my strength to smile
ask about his day
and bake us cakes.

Love doesn’t shame you
for needing rest.
It doesn’t pace the room,
checking the clock
while you fall apart.

Love pulls you close
and stays.
Even when your light is dim.
Especially then.

And I realised:
the love of my life
would never require me
to be someone I’m not
just to be held.

Now
I am learning how to be the one who stays.
With myself.
With my mess.
With the uncomfortable silence.
With the chaotic emotions.
With the inconsistent sleep.
With my unfinished healing.
I am rebuilding a home within
where softness is not punished,
where exhaustion is respected,
where burnout is not mistaken
for laziness or failure.

I’m not healed.
But I’m safe.

I still carry grief.
But it’s no longer a secret I bury.
It’s a graveyard of dreams I occasionally visit
with patience,
and poetry,
and forgiveness.

And some days,
I still hear the echo of his absence
in the quiet of my morning tea.
But I no longer beg the silence to love me.

I light my own candles now.
I buy my own flowers.
I write my own endings.
I care for myself in the ways I was never taken care of.

And I finally understand:
not every love that feels like home
is meant to be yours forever.

Some are just mirrors
to show you
what you deserve.
And how much more
you were always meant to become.

But still, there are nights
when I remember how he used to hold me
without truly seeing me.
And I wonder how many other women
are performing happiness
in the name of love.
How many are silencing their ache
just to be chosen.
How many are quietly dying
inside relationships
they prayed for.

Because no one teaches us
how to walk away from someone
we once begged the stars to bring us.

No one tells you
that healing doesn’t mean
you stop being sad by what could’ve been,
by what you once thought it was,
it means you stop betraying yourself
to keep pretending it still could be.

I learned to let go
not because I stopped loving,
but because I started listening
to the quiet sob of my soul
every time I stayed
where love didn’t speak my language.

I carry the ghost of that woman with me,
the one who kept showing up
when no one noticed she was drowning.
I kiss her forehead in my dreams.
I tell her I’m proud.
Because she didn’t give up
not even when she looked at grey skies
and her rose coloured glasses
lost their colour.

And now,
every time I write,
every time I choose softness over performance,
truth over pretending,
my own breath over anyone’s approval,
I am coming home.

To the only home that never left me:
myself.

And that is not just survival.
That is grace.
That is rebirth.
That is love,
in its purest,
most unshakable form.