I think I slept for less than four hours last night, but despite that, it was one of the more peaceful sleeps I have had in a while. I just made one mistake that shattered that peace. 😅 I checked one of his socials and saw a very cryptic update. As expected, I overthought and I overanalyzed it (poor me, when will I ever learn 😅). Good thing I still had a voice of reason in my head. I felt more grounded after some time and I finally let go of things that weren't out of my control.

As painful as it was, things were starting to settle in, that we were really already starting to drift apart. This would be the starting point wherein I won't know anything about him anymore, and slowly but surely, he will become a stranger to me, soon. And that was a sign for me to really redirect my attention back to myself. Those last five days were the roughest patch (I hope 🤞) and so now I start with focusing on my own growth and healing. The first five days felt like the darkest times of my life, but even though those days seemed dark, one thing is for sure: the morning will still come. Yes, the morning will come, and now I'm in the stage of anticipating that crack of dawn. 🌄 I'm really thankful for all the guidance that I was being given. I really felt like I was being guided (and guarded) throughout this journey.

I have never been so thankful for this blog. This is really becoming a tool for me, an outlet for my emotions. And I get to also capture my emotions real-time through the voice notes that I was making. I'm just grateful I have these tools that are helping me in processing all of these emotions. Also, compared to previous days, I can feel that the physical manifestations of this grief are improving. My crying sessions were becoming fewer and less intense. 😌

But of course, the mind can still feel overpowering. Today, a new set of thoughts started rushing in, related to factors that surround us that are just out of our control. I feel like I was romanticizing our relationship like it was a telenovela. 😅 New sets of questions surrounding the relationship came rushing to me, questions that I don't have the answers for, questions that don't really need to be answered at all. Those thoughts were not helping me, so I knew I needed to first process them, and let them go.

I need to learn how to be compassionate to myself. One of the very touching conversations I had with my friend a few days ago was just about this. A lot of people did say I did glow up during the relationship. Now that the relationship has ended, it doesn't mean that the glow should stop or eventually will be gone as well. Now that I have learned how I can bloom when someone loves me, I can do that to myself and allow myself to blossom even more. 🌸✨

During that same conversation, I mentioned to my friend that one of the things I truly appreciated with my then boyfriend was the way he was able to show me sides of myself that I didn't know I had, specifically in photos. Every time he took a photo of me, I would look in disbelief and amazement with that pretty girl smiling back at me from the image. I have never seen myself in that light. I have never seen myself look so beautiful. He was really able to capture it well. My friend agreed. She said that now that I know this, I can continue looking at myself in that way as well.

I thought today was going to be another day of processing and contemplating. I was planning to do this day-by-day blog entries until the day that we arranged to meet. But little did I know that things would change today. Because of that incessant nudge from my gut, I knew I had to clear some things with him. I reached out, and through a short message, I learned that he had sent a chat the previous day. With trembling hands, I opened our chat and there I saw the message. 

Now that I am writing about it, I feel like I was reliving that moment. It was one of the hardest moments of all. It literally felt like my world was falling apart. I tried to calm my nerves, but it felt like my mildly-recovering wound was gushed open again and now it's bleeding emotional pain. To cut the story short, I replied and then we got the chance to talk about it. A lot of debriefing, realizations, and things that we wished we did differently during our relationship. This was also when I realized that yeah, this chapter of my life is coming to a close. This is the closure part.

After the call, I felt light as a feather, as if all the burden and overthinking was lifted out of my shoulders. Most of the lingering questions that I had were answered in that call. It's just sad that really, the reasons for parting ways were factors that were out of our control. That part was what's making me feel sad. But again, these all still align with God's perfect timing. I think this was really the perfect time to end the relationship, before things become messier, as we navigate not just our connection, but also circumstances that would surround the relationship. Maybe this is the kind of relationship God has really planned for me so that I would now know what I want going into future relationships. 

And now, the mourning for the relationship began for me. And this was really the starting point of me trying to move on. The previous days were more of stepping back from the emotions of the relationship and processing and contemplating what I really wanted out of that relationship. All of the realizations that I did note were more of presenting emotionally-detached reasons on why things should or should not end. I was weighing the pros and cons, trying to reason out and see things clearly without the emotions involved. I feel like because of this plot twist, my suffering and moving in limbo was cut short. And because of that, I'm thankful, because now I can start to really move on.

You know what I'm mostly grateful for in all of this journey? That I followed my gut. Imagine the alternative -- me spending the next 30 days or so analyzing, questioning, and mulling over everything, and preparing myself for the eventual meetup, only to find out that there was a farewell message already sent to me weeks ago that I wasn't able to read. It would feel so devastating if it happened that way, because it just meant that I was preparing myself for nothing. The other party has long been gone walking the other way. I'm just so thankful that I was guided to reach out to discover the decision early on. Because of this I'm truly deeply grateful. I was saved from a more painful and heart-wrenching experience.