Tag Archives: relationship

Seven weeks

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I felt so proud of myself as I stood my ground and said the words out loud. 

If only you knew my heart was beating in my throat. 

If only I knew, I would immediately doubt my decision. Back and forth, back and forth, the thoughts are running a weird race in my mind. They try to penetrate my heart, but little do they know that I have mastered building instant walls. Protect when disappointment attacks.  

I heard your voice tremble at the other end of the phone when you gave it your best shot to change my mind. But what you didn’t hear was my heart shattering when I read your “please don’t be mad at me” line 3 hours earlier. It’s bizarre how everything can change so fast. 

How in just seven short weeks, you made me go from enjoying my careless freedom to sharing my most vulnerable thoughts with you first.

How in just seven short weeks, you went from being a notification on my phone to the person all my friends were rooting for. 

How in just seven short weeks we fucked it all up.

flames and fire

Soul on fire

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Something in my soul caught on fire. And it’s burning down all the dusty corners, destroying walls that were never supposed to collapse. 

Brick after brick, they are falling into the void of forgotten beliefs, hitting hard the floor of my most hidden parts. Every whoosh, every slam, every clank makes my heart beat differently. Not faster, not slower. Differently, yet it feels strangely familiar. Where do I know this beat from? The way these bricks break in half when they crumble to the depth of my soul is familiar yet all so new at the same time. How can something this new bring me memories I am not able to recall? 

Are they my future memories? Are they illusions dressed up in hope and faith? Or could they simply be the parts of me that wanted to feel liberated for so long?

My soul is on fire. But I’m not panicking. Rather, I feel amused. And a tiny bit annoyed. I was expecting my soul to be grieving for a little longer than this. How is it possible to have these vivid colours painting a new masterpiece inside my gallery of fine art already? I just put up the “under construction” sign and now I’m making space for a new exhibitor? The bricks are falling. The sound of crumbling is getting louder. 

Even though it’s terrifying, I’m not running to safety. I step right into the flame and look at this new-familiar thing in the eye. Show me what you’ve got! Show me what I’ve been running away from for so long. The bricks are falling. The sound of crumbling wants me to take cover in the safest corner of my soul. But everything’s on fire. I can’t hide. I can’t run. I can’t beat this with a logical plan. 

I get paralysed as I watch my old patterns burst into flames. I taste the saltiness of my tears as they roll down to my smiling lips. I let out the deepest exhale, which cracks something in my neck that sends a release into my shoulders. 

These bricks were too heavy. Too hard. Too useless.

My soul is on fire. And finally, I can breathe again. 

Break-up etiquette

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After a break up who gets custody of the inside jokes, the going-to-bed routines and the Netflix account? Who’s going to say first: “This couple we loved hanging out with are now my friends, not yours”? How do you decide when to leave the family chat? Should you even? You loved those silly videos and memes in that group so much. Why should you rob yourself of that moving forward? But deep inside you know already: that group chat will remain silent from now on. 

Who gets to keep adding new songs to the Spotify liked list? 
Who will ever be able to play Scrabble again without the memories rushing back?
Who can have coffee from the mug that weirdly represented us like it’s no big deal?

In what are you going to sleep now if not his old T-shirts? What do you do with them? Throw them out? Give them to charity? 

When do you change your relationship status on Facebook instead of just changing it to the ‘only I can see it’ view?

When a relationship ends, what hurts on a different level is the loss of connections to others that we get to experience through our partner. Or more like with our partner. I’m writing these sentences while wiping tears and snot off my face as I realise I won’t ever have those group chat giggles anymore. I won’t ever have those philosophical conversations until 2 in the morning with our friends. I won’t ever be the one responsible for finding the right Spotify playlist that has a bit of everything in it for all of us. That somehow blends hip-hop, rock, and jazz with just a small dash of pop-house-reggae-soul-blues-drum’n’base-electro. I won’t ever be the one to watch him cook while I ask mind-bending questions.  

What else are you losing when you lose a great love? A real one. 

I’m usually on the other side of this scenario. I’m the one who walks away from something that might not have a future even when the love is still there. The amount of times I’ve done that is not something I’m proud of but I always made sure it was gentle and the least amount of hurtful for the other person. But this one wasn’t. 

After 5 years of moments-building, challenge-fighting and comfort-zone-pushing, the end felt unnatural, unethical and most of all unexpected. 

So what do you do when nothing bad happened but all of it now suddenly feels bad? 

If you question why you didn’t listen to that voice in your head to walk away while it was still good? 

You’ll never know. 

All you know now is the myriad of questions you were unprepared for.

broken heart prose

No longer The One

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When I said let’s plan our goals together, you said not today, you’re tired. 

Tired of trying to live up to your imaginary expectations when in fact, all you did was latch onto me for support. 

Tired of feeling sorry for yourself for not feeling like a man.
Whatever that means in your dictionary. Because honestly, I was the one playing the role of the man in this relationship for 5 years. 

I was the one who fixed the broken sink. 

I was the one who reset the gas boiler.

I was the one who paid the rent.

I was the one who bought those concert tickets.

I was the one who had the money to buy the Jeep.

I was the one who sweet-talked to agents. 

I was the one who carried the responsibilities. 

While you were the one who cooked dinners. 

You were the one who did the laundry. 

You were the one who wanted to cuddle. 

You were the one who felt insecure about your body. 

You were the one who said we’re done. 

And now we are no longer One. 

The first cracks of the end

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[26th October 2024]

That disturbed feeling after an argument. 

It’s like your mind has malfunctioned and your heart has been washed out with bleach. The pain, the anger and the disappointment infill every hidden corner of your soul. The dried tears in the corner of your eyes mixed with mascara give you an itch. You don’t want to scratch it but you can’t resist. Just like you couldn’t resist saying out loud those deeply buried thoughts. Those little layers of annoyance which suddenly inflated into a giant bubble of anger. Then it suddenly burst open without your control. Bamm. Off it went, along with all of your hurtful words. The damage is done to both parties. Is it beyond repair? Or can we still slap a band-aid over it and pretend nothing happened? But that’s not me. I can’t play pretend. I can only be raw and real. No games, no tactics. 

So how do we know when an argument is fully over? Do we wait x amount of hours or days or is there a universal protocol I don’t know about? I’m not used to this. Until now, I’ve been doing my best to eliminate the potential of any arguments arising. Talk it out calmly, openly, and intelligently. This has been my motto in relationships and it worked most of the time. But today, he brought out the worst in me. The ugly side which isn’t kind or considerate. And it’s definitely not calm. The suppressed anger and disappointment erupted from me today. I saw another side of him which he used to tell me stories about as part of his past persona.

Until today, I haven’t met this side of him. Almost 5 years went by until he pulled the curtain back on this trick of his. I mean, good job hiding it for so long. But what I saw today is not something I need in my life. It’s not something I want in my life. There isn’t enough amount of love in this world to justify this hurtful behaviour. This is not the man I fell in love with. And if it turns out that this is the real him, then I’ll have to make a painful decision.

J, this is what you meant

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So many thoughts are swirling around within a pool of heavy emotions within me. How can something get rooted so deep inside your soul in such a short amount of time?

I guess you had no idea just how deep those roots really were. I can’t blame you, I’m not exactly vocal when expressing my feelings. But my emotions were there for you to see: when I closed my mouth and just listened for hours to absorb some of your pain. When I opened my mouth and told you how powerful your soul is and how much potential you truly have. When I got un-comfy just to get you a glass of water because that was what you needed. When I covered you in a blanket when you were fast asleep already with the AC still on. When I watched those documentaries with you to try to understand you better. When I took a backseat to let you be in control. Those were the moments that made my soul light up, that made my heart shimmer and made my mind stop.

I guess you had no idea just how much I really enjoyed our philosophical debates. When you set my brain on fire, you made me feel alive and more attracted to you than you could ever imagine. I felt your intelligence making its way through my bloodstream making my heart pump faster. Those were the moments when I felt the closest to the raw you.

I guess you had no idea how impatiently I was counting down the hours to be spending time with you. To do nothing in particular but just to feel your energy. Just to play with your hand between my fingers or to get lost for a moment in your gaze.

I guess you also had no idea how much I struggled to make this work. How much pain you caused me while pushing me away unintentionally. How many chances I had given this to work is beyond my rational mind. That’s how I knew that my feelings were truly real and raw. They conquered my logic countless times. Shutting me out from your vulnerable space made me feel that I was not worthy for you to enter that sacred place. Slipping back into your bad habits made me question if we are ever going to get really aligned. Were we even looking into the same direction? I’ll never know. What I do know is that these few months have shaped my life and despite the pain, I also got a different level of caring from you. I’ll be ever so grateful for those moments.

I guess I had to experience multiple heartbreaks with you in such a short amount of time to love you even deeper. And to eventually to love me even deeper. To realise that when two people love each other that might not be all what it takes to build a healthy partnership.

So J, what you meant to me was something I’ve never had before. Something so strange, so intense, so painful, so full of drama and so fiery. So satisfying yet so not enough. So ambivalent and so confusing.

When I walked away from you for the last time I was hurt but mostly I was angry at myself that I let you make me feel worthless. The way you talked to me was not something I could shove into one of those ‘guess you had no idea’ boxes.

(I guess I realised my real worth.)

Seeing through dark clouds

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21/03/2018

She didn’t care what other people would think about it, this was her life and her decisions. No one else can live her life, experience her moments each day. No one but her.

She didn’t understand why this made her feel so good despite battling through a dark phase together. Perhaps she was capable of seeing through the dark clouds and her mind knew that her heart was telling the truth. She just needed to trust the process. She just needed a little more patience to get to experience the bright days as well. Even in this darkness the sun would still break through for moments, some of them were quite long, blissful moments.

These were all that mattered.

She didn’t understand why he was afraid to believe that her feelings were real. Maybe he’s been carrying too much pain inside for too long. Maybe too much disappointment and he might be a little scared of losing it all again. She didn’t need to understand any of this.

She didn’t care how irrational this seemed from the outside. It made her happy somehow. It made her feel that this is a man worthy of her time. Someone she can trust, someone she can care for and be cared for. The simple things, the little things.

These were all that mattered.

She didn’t want to convince anyone, not even herself. If there are some things that can’t be understood but her gut feeling says it is a good thing for her then just let it be. Perhaps she will understand it all one day.

She decided to enjoy it all. Every little moment of it. This was her life, her moments. No one else can feel what she feels each day. No one but her.

Understanding this is what truly matters.

Change of plans

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I never planned this to happen. Didn’t even imagine or wanted it to go this way and even as it started happening I was still running away from it. Why? I just didn’t believe that this could turn into something so real. All I wanted was one night of passionate fun. Pure physical satisfaction. Exactly one year ago that’s what I thought would happen: spending one night with you and waving you goodbye in the morning with post-sex messed up hair.

Instead, I found someone who makes me feel alive, who I crave from the deepest parts of my soul. Someone who makes me smile when I see his name pop up on my phone’s screen. Someone whom I have fallen madly in love with for the way he is without wanting to change anything about him. This whole thing feels so natural, comfortable, so relaxing yet very exciting.

I’m generally not a romantic kind of girl but somehow you make me want to tell you just how much you mean to me. How I can’t imagine spending a day without writing you ‘bongu’ or call you a ‘mignun’ at least once a day. Let me try to explain myself a bit better: it’s like I was running around at a high speed, aimlessly without a destination in my mind when suddenly you held my hand that made me come to a full stop. It wasn’t just me who stopped. Every time you kiss me or look into my eyes, I forget that there is a whole world around us. You made the Universe stop. And I can’t imagine doing anything better than standing still with you, holding your hand while the rest of the world is running around in chaos. I know we didn’t arrive to this place in a simple or traditional way but guess what? I think that’s what I like the most. Against all the odds we still arrived here.

I’m so grateful that this didn’t go as I originally planned it. Thank you for being as amazing as you are.