How Internalized Healing Helped Me Embrace the Darkness

Breakups can leave you feeling broken and unloved

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Nine years ago, he walked away, chasing a dream that no longer included me. One moment, we were mapping out our future — weekend getaways, inside jokes, lazy Sunday mornings tangled in sheets — and the next, I was staring at an empty closet where his clothes used to be.

The silence was unbearable. The bed felt too big, and the apartment was too hollow.

I tried to be strong. I told myself I understood. He had ambitions and goals beyond our little world. But understanding didn’t stop the nights I curled up on the floor, sobbing into a pillow that still smelled like him. It didn’t stop the questions that gnawed at me: Was I not enough?

Did I hold him back? Was love ever real, or was it just another thing people outgrew?

The weight of it crushed me. I stopped eating. I slept too much, then not at all. My friends reached out, but their voices felt distant — like they were calling to me through thick glass. I wanted to move on, but I didn’t know how.

So, I did nothing.

I existed. Barely.

One night, after months of drowning, I found an old journal buried in a drawer. Flipping through the pages, I…