‘You should never be made to feel second best. It’s time to leave.’

I did it. It’s been a week of no contact. The first three days were rough, I couldn’t stop crying. This Asian kid couldn’t stop staring at the hysterical 23-year-old sobbing in the bus on a lovely, quiet Sunday afternoon.

The cries were necessary because even if I lost a best friend, a potential partner, someone who I hoped would be the father of my children someday – I knew I shouldn’t be made to feel like a backup option. I woke up that Sunday morning after I broke it off and said to myself ‘I made the biggest mistake; I just lost the love of my life.’ It has become clear to me now, in the post-war period that the love of your life should never cause more tears than laughter, and make you feel more unloved than loved, provoking a constant feeling of self-doubt rather than self-assurance.

Yes, I miss his kisses, his hugs, his laugh. But that’s it. They’re merely memories kept in a capsule and a lesson for me. Our memories were not only stills of our shared moments but a culmination of a story that one must experience heartbreak, and emotional torment to understand what freedom looks like. To understand what love looks like. Sure, I won’t ever be one of those people who gets the partner right the first time and stays married to them for the rest of their life. Yet, failed relationships invoke an accelerated process one gets the hang of the next time they meet someone – if he can’t commit to you and fails to let you know his plans within the next 3 months, it’s time to leave. Immediately. It took me a little longer than 6 months to realize his mind was never going to change, that he wasn’t going to change.

God had been fervently talking me into leaving, and one random morning I woke up and thought ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I can’t keep running around in circles with a man who doesn’t want to commit to me, who can’t love me. It was then that I realized, love isn’t absolute. Just because you love each other doesn’t conjure a stable relationship. God doesn’t, and hardly ever works that way. It wasn’t in the cards for us. As I hugged my plush bears into sleep, I remembered his affinity towards them. A lot of things remind me of him, he’s everywhere. But I don’t think of him anymore, or at least, when I think of him – the thought lingers for a while and decides to leave.

To my surprise, I’m shocked that I’m taking a shorter time to grieve. Perhaps during our tumultuous relationship, I had grieved enough. The late nights of crying, the lack of sleep, the eating and non-eating. He became a part of me, and I had to cut it off because its sweet taste had left a bitter poisonous stream in my veins.

An ode to a somewhat lukewarm Christian habit, I did not want to talk to God. I didn’t understand why this person entered my life and chaos erupted. Initially, I didn’t know what to do with myself, because I had forgotten who I was before him. I don’t know who I am now, but I know the nearness I have felt in the past few days with God felt like compensation for a detachment to a relationship I should have prioritised from the start. What I need, and always needed was the kind of love that stays in the fight, never quits, never hides, never runs.