What happens when you don’t prepare yourself for a relationship

I once wrote a farewell letter to an ex. A letter. That’s how I process myself. In that letter, I came to a realization why things happened the way they did.

Right from the start I knew I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship. I was broken. I was dealing with a crisis. I was recovering from a bout of depression.

But he was persistent and truth be told, I love this person. It was the typical, I just wasn’t ready. Two years of repeatedly turning him down, I gave in.

It wasn’t my best performance.

I was trying to heal myself while trying to be in a relationship with him. You can’t pour from an empty cup so there was so little I was able to give in that relationship. At least, too little for how much I know I am capable of giving.

I kept working on myself, building me up, healing what broken pieces left me shattered from within. He was the one filling up my cup. I had no source. Whatever self-love I have left, I pour it all over to my healing. With what he gives me, I use that to hasten my recovery so that I can be fully with him. Whatever’s left, that’s how much I can give back to him. And it wasn’t plenty.

With him filling my cup, I was slowly on my way to recovery. I can say at one point, my cup was half-filled. That was how much he was giving to me. He was sustaining the both of us.

And then like a taunt from the universe, another draining life event consumed all that I have pooled up.

I had to work hard to fill me up again. I talked to people, listened to countless podcasts, read self-help books, helped others, organized outreach to help me feel better about myself — just about everything I know to fill me up fast.

Just when I’m almost done gluing my broken pieces back together, universe smashes you right in front of you. Death, conflicts, tragedies — conflicts upon conflicts. Another kick when you’re just about to stand back up. It. was. hard. is an understatement. And I know you know what I’m talking about. When it rains, it ravages!

No matter how much he was loving me, I can’t seem to get my cup all full. I later realized it was because I was broken, I had leaks all over the place. Sometimes, the leak is faster than the filling, then I’d find myself running low again.

That is the very reason why they say don’t get into a relationship until you’re whole, you’re healed, and you’re so full of yourself. A relationship is a give and take. You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t keep taking because that will consume the other. You have to be full of yourself.

I didn’t, I mean never wanted to be the kind of person I was in that relationship. I despised that girl. But I was trying to make do with what I have at the moment. I was trying to love myself and him without a capital of love to use, so to speak. My heart is all I have. I was drawing everything from what I believe is a big, big heart that I have. Even that, it wasn’t enough.

Needless to say, it turned out exactly as expected — messy, painful, all the more wrecking. The shattered glasses from my brokenness are hurting him. I never wanted to but that’s what you do when you walk around with protruded broken glass pieces covering you. You hurt whoever comes close. Hurt people hurt people.

While he wasn’t feeling it before when he was still high on love, he started to feel the pain when endorphins started to wither.

At this point, he was bravely hurting. Hurt people hurt people. It has become a vicious cycle of hurting each other. Probably without us knowing what was really happening in the bigger scheme of things. After all, we were so into our own self-preservation, we never saw it from top view. We held on because the deep love we have for each other kept us together. Until one just snapped out of it.

In that letter, I apologized profusely. While he had all the great intentions, my brokenness ruined the relationship for the both of us. I was barely holding on at that time. I was just living day by day, reacting to the moment. I can’t even get myself to stand to get a better perspective of what was really happening. I was just focused on getting better. I was just focused on me. And I took him down with me.

That’s all I regret.

If only I had the courage to reject him upfront and actually stood by that for real, I could’ve prevented all these.

But I was so selfish then. I held on to him because it felt nice to have someone hold you, carry you, protect you, love you. For once, I didn’t have to do it all by myself again, as it has always been. I fed off of all his good energies. I sucked the life out of him. I was a vampire because I felt so dead inside, anything that resembled blood and life, I took.

But I couldn’t have thought of doing the right thing because I wasn’t anywhere near being in the right headspace.

Everything that felt nice felt right. That was my only criteria for decision-making. I can’t even make a confidently good decision where I was at that time.

So somehow, I’m proud I haven’t irreversibly ruined my life :D. It could’ve gone a lot of different ways.

As a lover of love, I am one of those who gets awfully devastated by unsuccessful relationships. In my definition of success, relationships is on the top of that. So this ending, I took a really hard blow. It was an explosion of all my insecurities, my failures, my flaws, my weaknesses, the overall fluke of my being. As with all my other breakups. Probably, as in all breakups.

So I’m taking this as a fast rewind to that moment before the relationship. This time, I’ll try to do it right. This is my fresh start to fully heal myself — alone, without crutches, without escapes in a good big warm embrace that somehow makes you feel like everything’s all right. Fully accepting this moment as it is. Just me, myself, and this time, with God. This is my surrender.

The Universe whispered, you are not broken, you are unfinished.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8–9

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33