Counting up the days until I find solace

(I will be writing about my ex-lover under the pseudonym of X.)

Day 1: We broke up.

Day 2: It was the right decision, I said to myself. It was never going to work out since the very beginning. Grow up, Janice. It would have been a vicious cycle of torment. I screamed these thoughts into my head until it was engraved on my skull. I got out of bed. I looked at my pillow case. My pillow case was wet with the print of my face. Dammit, I can’t go to work with swollen eyes.

Day 3: I have a hectic timetable. I got on the school bus and put my Spotify playlist on shuffle. What a beautiful day, can’t ruin it by thinking about — *Daylight, I wake up feeling like you won’t play right.* Our song came on shuffle. My mind flashed back to the time he first sang this song to me. Or the time when he tried to mimic Childish Gambino’s ridiculous high-pitch. Or all those times when we cuddled and fell asleep to this song. I cried again.

Day 4: We saw each other at work. How are you? X, I miss you. Can we have dinner tonight? Maybe if we tried harder, we will work out? This was what I wanted to say. But I stuttered. “Hope you’re doing good.” “Stop skipping meals, you’re getting skinnier.” We ate our lunch in silence. “You know, I still care about you. Everything you said about feeling sorry for wasting my time with you, it was never a waste of my time, I cherished every second of our relationship.” He broke down. I put my hand on his shoulder, “No, Janice, stop, please.”

Day 5: It is a Sunday! Sunday Funday! No more sobbing, cheerful thoughts, cheerful thoughts. I met some friends, yes, because distraction is your key to survival after a breakup. You hangout with your friends, expecting this magic to work anytime now. A full day of good conversations, you thought, yet the hole in your heart is still not filled; you try to stuff that hole with exciting future plans with people, yet you walk to bed every night with pieces of your heart crumbling down your chest.

Day 6: I hate Mondays. More like ‘mourn’days. I don’t do anything on Mondays, which is why I hate Mondays. But I do do a lot of overthinking. Like, a crazy amount of it. I hope that burns calories, it was definitely a lot of brain activity.

Day 7: I love Tuesdays, we always make dinner plans after school… Oh wait, he’s not in the picture anymore. Maybe Tuesdays aren’t that great anymore, seeing my timetable gives me anxiety. Thinking about him gives me anxiety. I realised he appeared in my mind more often after the breakup than he ever did during the relationship. You think about the past, present and future. You think about the day you guys first met, you think about the things you would be doing with him right now, you think about the proposed future Bali trip with him. He could have been the one, but now he’s the one that got away.

Day 8: My mum is getting tired of seeing my sad face everywhere we went. I’m in despair, mum, just let me be. “What? From a breakup? You’re just 20. When I was your age I would just move on.” I admit, I do talk about my breakup a lot, I was obsessed with it, it was the only thing on my mind.

Whenever I feel like I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel, I would step back, as if I didn’t want myself to heal so soon because it would mean I had completely cut ties with this relationship physically and emotionally.

Day 9: Though he doesn’t work on Thursdays, it still hurts seeing his handwriting and things marked with “X” in the workplace. I went to work as usual, had my lunch, went home. I did it. I made it through the first week. I’m not crying like I used to, I’m not stalking him like I used to, I don’t want to get back with him anymore, like I used to. Change is on the way.

Day 10: Sanity is essential during the 5 stages of grief. DENIAL- you feel numb, everything’s meaningless to you, only thing you want to do is to get through each day without breaking down. ANGER- an outrageous, limitless emotion. It’s an ingenious concept really, for humankind to feel so strongly about something. BARGAINING- you want to go back in time and mend the relationship. You start thinking in a ‘What if’ perspective and how it could’ve been a ‘happily ever after’. DEPRESSION- the only emotion that co-exists with all the other stages. Not a good feeling. ACCEPTANCE- sorry but- you will still feel like shit during this stage. This stage is about self-actualisation and self-realisation, the stage where you learn to harden the fuck up.

Day 11: We returned each other our stuff today. He started crying. I asked why. “It’s just a lot of memories with you…” He returned me my clothes but I gave him my favourite t-shirt, it looked really good and fit on him. Things will improve, we know it. He’s moving to Australia, and i’m working on my future goals. I thought I became happier now, until he texted me later at night.

Day 12: I woke up with the most merciless hangover ever. Last night’s a blur. G&T and daiquiri! Never again! I browse my phone to see if there’s any leftover evidence to piece my night together. Oh, he texted me last night. I opened it and read it with disbelief. No, no, i’m not letting him do this to me, he can’t be saying all these sweet stuff to me when I’m doing so well right now. All my progress has gone down the drain. I called him, I said firmly “Don’t talk to me like this again, goodbye.” I cut the call and I burst into tears.

Day 13: We bumped into each other yesterday. He was back to smoking, surprise surprise. I was with a guy friend, who X dislikes very much- “That guy has a thing for you, how can you not see it?” was what he would tell me every time. Oh my, it was exhausting whenever we had conversations about my guy friends. I saw the pain on X’s face when he saw me. Chill, did you forget we’re done deal?

Day 14: “You are having separation anxiety right now, don’t worry, it will be over.” There’s a word for that? Separation anxiety? “It means the anxious feeling you get after separating from someone who you were emotionally attached to.” Ah, that sounds familiar. Very familiar.

Day 15: Dinner with my friends essentially means two hours of Janice blabbing about her breakup, I almost feel bad for them sometimes. “If this was a drinking game where we take a shot every time Janice asks ‘Will I ever get over him?’, we would all be wasted by now.” Ha, ha, very funny, but seriously, will I ever get over him? *Takes shot again*

Day 16: There are some days when I’m just like, fuck it, I am over it, totally. Today was the day. For once after the breakup, I felt a surge of confidence inside my body, a feeling that has long been foreign to me. I can do whatever I want! I have all the free time in the world. Man, how was I ever patient enough to travel from my place to his, then back to mine, almost everyday? I was starting to see the goods in this breakup. Now, let me just tone up this newfound sassiness a little bit- Girl, better things are yet to happen.

“I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.” — Edna Mode

Day 17: It is getting better.

Day 18: Annnnnnnnd fuck, we’re working together again — Gosh, this is distracting. He had a quiet voice but it seemed like it was the only thing I could hear in the room, echoing loud and clear. It was probably the wrong thing to do but I invited him to come to this art exhibition with me after work. “Can’t, got Clockenflap.” Oh, excuse me?

Day 19: Clockenflap? I said to myself when I woke up. What is he doing at Clockenflap? He explicitly said he was not interested in these cash-eating music festivals when we were still together. This is annoying, how can he be having fu- okay now, the whole point of breaking up is to learn from your past mistakes. Pettiness is a no-no.

Day 20: Everyone says “Post-breakup workouts are great, it is a spiritual practice.” What they’re really saying is, “Get that revenge bod.” I was looking for neither, all I wanted to do was spend some quality time with my friend in a spinning class, get on ’em wheels. As I was intensely riding my bike, feeling my cold sweat slowly evaporating, I felt a sense of relief. This relief, was like an outer membrane around my thoughts, acting as an barrier to bad thoughts. I feel really good; these wheels do have magical powers.

Day 21: People say, there’s going to be good days and bad days after a breakup. Today is the bad day. Where’s all the good feeling from yesterday? On the wheels? I was an empowered fierce lady yesterday, now I’m back to rolling into a ball under my blankets to avoid the real world.

Day 22: Just as the title suggests, everyday I was counting up till the day I feel completely fine and good about myself again. Which explains the anticipation. Then the impatience. Then frustration. At last, you start to worry if you will ever feel happy again.

Day 23: The upside of this breakup is that I’ve been treating myself very darn well the past 23 days, digging a pretty deep hole in my wallet. Like Tom from Parks and Recreation said — “Treat yoself”

Day 24: Same shit, different day.

Day 25: Will he ever text me again?

Day 26: Your friend comes up and asks you “How are you holding up? You shrug. Then they go on for the next half an hour with “Just don’t give a fuck Janice, he isn’t worth it anyway.” Comforting a heartbroken person by saying “Just don’t give a fuck.” is like Paris Hilton’s infamous quote on her shirt “Stop being poor”. It is out of the question for someone to not think about the other person when the breakup is still fresh. So, for someone to ‘not give a fuck’ about the other person’s wellbeing, someone you cared about the most with all your heart before, I doubt it.

Day 27: I still think about our memories, especially our Macau trip that we went on just 2 days before the actual breakup on November 1st. It was a lovely 2-day trip. To give more background information, we took a 1-week break right before the trip to cool down from the restless tedious arguments, which explains for why we wanted the trip to be so perfect. When we finally saw each other after the long isolating break, we hugged. We made up. We made compromises. I said, X, this is going to be the new start of our relationship, we’re going to make this work. We thought. Who knew things would turn to shit again in less than a week. Better put the fire out before it turns catastrophic. Thinking about it, that was just the beginning of our end.

Day 28: A part of me is still petty about the breakup, but a big part of me is genuinely hoping that good things would happen to him.

Day 29: Of course good things are going to happen to him, I believe in him. I fell in love with him because of his intelligence, because of his kindness, because of his sense of humour. He will get to where he wants to be. I hope he will remember this relationship the way I do, a sublime dream that we both have to wake up from, a stepping stone to our individual lives.

Day 30: I spent my last day of November revisiting old memories with him, just like the past few weeks. The only difference is I came to an epiphany that I only miss the memories, not him. These bittersweet memories flood my brain with melancholy, tricking me into thinking that I still have a love desire for him. Why did we break up? We were so happy together. Why can’t we get back together, and relive the good memories? I have never loved someone so much, it wow-ed me knowing that I was capable of acquiring such an overwhelming amount of love.

But that is why we broke up, right? Am I willing to sacrifice this much love to a relationship that may go really wrong in the end?

“Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, you have the capacity to someday love the whole world, it’s your destiny.”

Fast forward a month, I am writing this following part on the last day of 2017, December 31st. Another month that got my emotions running up and down like a roller coaster. We ended up on bad terms, as one of us did not want to be friends anymore. The relationship was a big part of my 2017, it shaped me to become a different person with more experiences and perspectives. This relationship is indeed a special one; I’ve felt more than I have ever felt in my whole life. X is going to stand an important place in my heart no matter what.

How do I feel? Good. I don’t regret anything I have done in 2017, because at one point, no matter how fucked up the consequences I knew it would be, I wanted to do it, and I did it. There’s nothing I haven’t done in 2017, because I have done it all.

Remove toxic habits? Check.

Remove toxic friends? Check.

Remove toxic feelings? Check.

I have done it all, and I am going to step into 2018 and conquer anything.