Between me and me.

Letting go means letting go of him, and her too.

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Sudden heartbreak overrides everything. Since we broke up last week, I’ve tried to write essays on anything but the break-up. Every other topic felt like avoidance.

A few days after it, my body still thought it was loved. On Tuesday, I broke the news to her: you’re not there anymore, you’re now heartbroken.

Naming the heartbreak didn’t solve it, but it cracked it open and spun me into motion. It told me to feel, then to speak.

As the sole voice behind Gotta Start Somewhere, this space inherits everything from me, even the messy parts.

I dream of this space carrying energy, compassion, self-awareness, courage, and growth. I feared it would be hard to maintain this through heartbreak. I almost skipped publishing this week and waited until I had a “clearer” mind.

These past few months, I’ve felt safe sharing deeply personal essays, thanks to the love and safety I felt with my partner. He made it feel not only OK, but also attractive to show the real me.

But when the breakup happened, I would somehow need to find faith in only myself to keep being her, keep writing, keep showing up without him.

I’ve never found life to be steady. The more I’ve clung to stability and waited for a clear mind, the less I have and the foggier I am.

So fuck “finding a clearer mind and stability.” Energy, compassion, self-awareness, courage, and growth are found when remembered in the middle of chaos. When I can let myself be messy without judgment.

I still hope we will find our way back to one another. Not to resume what we had, but maybe to begin again, from a place of greater clarity and growth. I’m not waiting for it, but I won’t pretend I’m too proud to want it. That’s the tension I live with.

Sad, but confident. I’ve learned to have both at the same time.

I used to avoid these dualities and push away the messy.

Why would I exist between versions of myself?

Between cultures.

Between emotions.

Between simplicity and complexity.

Between being in love and out of love.

Just choose, Maria, and you’ll succeed faster.

Instead of letting myself be messy, I would opt for setting my limits at the point where I felt assured of success. Living within these bounds, I felt stifled, smothered, depressed, and bored. But, yes, I felt safe. Safe within the coffin of my depression.

What writing for hours each day began, the breakup finished with a final blow to the girl I’d been performing for years. Because the break-up wasn’t just between me and my partner, it was between each of us and the smaller, younger versions of ourselves we’d outgrown.

I began grieving the performative me when I started this beautiful relationship with a really loving man, like trimming away rotted roots so something new can grow. Replanted in the rich soil of writing, love, and a happy home, I was ready to grow into the new me, but I hadn’t yet. And that gap brought fear, because the old me was already gone.

Whether or not we find our way back to each other, I’m not sure. I want him to grow. I want that for me, too. Others may choose comfort over growth, and sometimes I envy that existence, but it’s not in my blood to shrink into something I’ve outgrown.

Something I loved most, among many things, about him was how he lived. He never hid what he wanted. He just let himself go for it, without fear of how others might see him. He lived in the tension, unafraid to try on different lives, just like me. And we cheered each other on through all our ambitious pursuits. Because, at our core, we’re both free spirits. It’s funny to think that the qualities I loved are the same qualities that broke us apart.

But real life lives in tension. Interesting people don’t avoid it; they dance while it’s happening. So for now, I’ll stay here: between letting him go and not yet knowing if I should. Between heartbreak and possibility. Between crying at the Thai restaurant with my friends and then laughing two minutes later at a dumb joke.

I’ll live here in the messy, colorful place between me and me.