Heartbreak diaries #4: A punch in my stomach

How he left me without breath and when I went back to normal, he called it fucking artificial.

2nd of July 2025
Troon, Scotland.

I met a man who brought me flowers
every single week
tulips, soft roses, tiny wild things
he said I deserved it,
to know how much I was loved.
He held my hand like it was sacred,
texted me good morning and goodnight
with kisses in every vowel.

He said I made him believe in forever.
He cooked dinner while dancing with me in the kitchen.
He looked into my eyes and said:
“I could see myself growing old with you.”

He called me his safe place.
He said I was home.

And I believed it.
I let my walls fall
like autumn leaves on a windless day.
Slow, warm, trusting.
I exhaled for the first time,
being with a partner.
I finally stopped waiting for the storm.

And then —
the punch.
the silence.
the empty chair.
the suddenness of a goodbye I didn’t see coming.

“I think we should break up,” he said,
like he was talking about the weather.
Or getting a damn haircut.

And my body —
my body screamed.

I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t move.
I felt like someone had
punched me in the stomach
with all the force of a betrayal
that has no name
because there was no affair,
no fight,
no monster to blame —
just
a soft ghosting
from the man who once called me his always.

He didn’t hit me.
But god,
that goodbye broke bones I didn’t know I had.

And what hurts the most
is not that he left.
It’s that he changed the ending
after promising me a story
with no last page.

He said it so early,
two weeks in,
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

And I held that like gospel.
Like air.
Like something I could count on
when the world was too heavy.
Like I was no longer alone.

But I was already drowning
in depression,
burnout,
anxiety,
and a medication that left me
barely awake,
barely there.

I needed someone to hold me.

And instead,
I got
the punch.

The kind that collapses your lungs.
That steals the breath from your body
like a thief in the middle of the night.
The kind of punch that doesn’t land on your skin,
but beneath it.
Buried deep, in your trust.
It comes without a scream.
It comes without warning.
It’s just there.
And suddenly you’re not.

It folds you in half.
You gasp.
But no air comes.
Your mind tries to catch up,
tries to make sense of things,
but it’s like watching the world spin
through a cracked mirror,
shattered in real time.

I stood there, frozen,
like someone had dropped my entire nervous system
into an ice bath.
Every cell in my body screamed:
what just happened?
But there was no answer.
Only cold.
Only stillness.
Only shock.

My hands trembled.
My ears rang.
My mouth was dry.
And I was suddenly a child again,
learning how to breathe.
One rib at a time.
One sob at a time.
Trying to remember
what it means
to survive.

I used every ounce of strength
just to remember how to inhale.
How to pull air back into my lungs
like I deserved it.
How to stay upright
when everything inside me
wanted to collapse to the floor.

And then came the questions.
The disbelief.
How could he do this?
He, who was gentle.
He, who was kind.
He, who brought me flowers
and kissed my forehead
and told me I was his peace.
He, who wanted to get me pregnant,
and marry me.

That’s what made it worse.
It wasn’t a stranger.
It wasn’t a villain.
It was him.
The softest man I knew
turned into a ghost
with a heart cold as ice
with eyes with no sign of remorse,
or any emotion at all,
that left bruises in my breath.

Even my mother didn’t see it coming.
And she sees everything.
She’s the kind of woman
who always knew when someone wouldn’t last.
She warned me about the others.
She protected me before I even knew I needed protecting.
But this time, she believed in him too.
She told me,
“This one’s for life.”

He fooled even her.
And no one fools my mother.
Ever.

When I told her what happened,
her face dropped
like the ground itself had betrayed her.
She was speechless.
She looked at me the way I looked at myself in the mirror that night,
disoriented.
Like the world had cracked in half
and no one heard it but us.
My friends had the same reaction.

And still,
he had the nerve
to watch my stories after the breakup
and call my joy artificial.

As if breathing again made me fake.
As if surviving the pain
meant I never felt it.

Can you believe
the
fucking
audacity?
(And not the good kind of it).

What did he want?
That I stayed there,
curled up in the bruise he left behind?
That I bled in silence for his comfort?
That I wore the scar like a necklace
and whispered grief into my morning coffee
for his approval?

He hurt me.
Deeply.
Undeniably.
But I got up.
I gasped for air,
I fought for my breath,
I found my pulse,
I stitched myself whole with trembling fingers
with fear in my eyes
with shaking legs
and I moved on.

Because when I love,
I love fully.
I write love letters.
I leave sticky notes with poems in them.
I make playlists.
I cook dinner.
I surprise you with your favorite thing on a random Wednesday.
I remember how you like your coffee.
I remember your fears.
I create space.
I don’t cling,
but I stay close.
I don’t demand,
but I offer.
I’m soft,
but I don’t break.

And if someone,
after receiving all of that —
can still look at me and think,
“maybe I’d be better off without her,
then please,
please,
leave me.
Leave me fast.
Don’t hesitate.
Go.
I don’t want a “maybe”,
I want someone that says
“Hell fucking yes!”

Because this life is too damn short
and too holy
to be spent with anyone
who doesn’t recognise
what it means
to be loved by me.

So yes, I posted my life.
I danced.
I wore red lipstick.
I kissed strangers,
and collected lovers across countries.
I made new friends,
and saw old ones.
I booked flights.
I felt the sun on my skin again.
And none of that was fake.

You can call me anything you want.
Call me dramatic.
Call me reckless.
Call me chaotic.
Call me impulsive.
Call me messy.
Call me damn audacious.
I’ll wear all of it.

But
don’t
you
dare
call
me
artificial.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve never been,
it’s fake.
I feel everything.
I speak from the deepest parts of my soul.
I wear my heart on my sleeve.
I bleed honestly, and publicly.
I love with fire.

And I’m not ashamed
that I survived your storm
and danced in the sun
the very next day.