I know we’re not talking right now, but it’s late on the day that I start my new life and I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because I’m going to be doing it all alone. In a few hours, I’ll wake up, shower, make coffee, and go to my new job knowing that when I get home I won’t be opening a bottle of wine and telling you how it went. Instead, I’ll be eating cereal by myself while feeling the full weight of the reality that the only person I want to tell about my day is the only person I can’t talk to.

I’ve been a total train wreck in the wake of our demise. An ACTUAL catastrophe of self-loathing and loneliness that I wasn’t even aware I was capable of feeling until I was sitting in my car outside your apartment crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. The night we broke up, I immediately took off the ring you gave me, folded and stacked all of your clothes that I have accumulated, and rearranged everything in my room that reminds me that you exist. Consequently, my room is now littered with piles of miscellaneous items constantly reminding me that even though you’re gone, you’re never going to be too far from my mind. I confess that sometimes I still take your sweatshirt out of the pile and lie on my bed breathing in your scent and stop pretending to be okay.

In the weeks that you’ve been gone, I’ve started the process of organizing my life without you in it. Awkwardly filling the gaps you once occupied with new activities, old acquaintances, crappy movies, and more ice cream than I’d care to admit. Despite all of my efforts to charge ahead and leave you behind, I keep thinking that with enough time you’ll change your mind. That you’ll realize you made a mistake. That you want me back. That you want to be “us” again. That you still love me. I keep thinking you’ll change your mind and once again see me as the person standing next to you on your wedding day. As the person sitting on the couch with you after we put our kids to sleep. I keep thinking that you’ll simply change your mind and come back to me.

But I don’t want you to change your mind, I want you to make up your mind. I want you to make up your mind that it is me. That I wasn’t wrong to love you so deeply and believe you when you said you wanted to spend your life with me. I want you to make up your mind that while, yes, there are tens or hundreds or thousands of women that you could be with who might be fun/exciting/good in bed that I am the only one you truly love. I want you to make up your mind that the person who makes you happiest and makes your life feel worth living is me.

But I don’t know when or if that will happen and that’s the most painful part of all of this. The possibility that the love of your life may just simply not be me.

Either way, I’m going to start my new job tomorrow and I’m nervous. You’re the one person who knows how to calm me down and tomorrow I’ll be leaving my apartment without you telling me that I can do it, that I’m going to be great, that I shouldn’t be scared, and that you can’t wait to hear all about it tonight. I’ll go through each and every day putting one foot in front of the other while working hard to convince everyone that I am fine knowing that you’re somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else. I will put you out of my mind and simply carry on. Until I see your favorite candy at the grocery store. Until my phone vibrates. Until that song comes on. Until I have to go to sleep. Until I fall apart and have to start all over again…without you.

Ever since I could remember, I wanted to write for a living. I eat and breathe literature. But then, things turned differently when I passed the most prestigious high school (so they say), the Philippine Science High School, Main Campus. My parents did not force me (in fairness to my dad and my mom, they respected my decision just in any case), the circumstances forced me. Life was not always a silver spoon for my family. We had our ups and downs. That moment when I saw my mother cry because her head was spinning where to get the means to provide for her children was my turning point. I gave up my dream and signed that f* up contract to have a science course 4 years from that day, May of 2001. Having finished it on October 2009, after graduating from UP Diliman B.S. Biology made me feel accomplished; however another opportunity was knocking on the door--medical school.

Life was not easy. No one has it smoothly. When life throws you a ball, you throw it back. Why? Because you just got to. Nothing else to say. No more excuses. No words left. You just have to.

Easy as that. I gave up writing. I also lost the eloquence of my words through the years. Writer's drought as they call it. But bit by bit, I found my words by coming to terms with myself and I was able to live out with the decisions I've made.