A week after Andre left, I saw a photo of us. Someone had tagged us in an old post—smiling, arms looped, that conscious couple glow. I almost didn't recognize us.
We looked like the answer. Two people who had done the work. But I knew now: we hadn't done the right kind of work. We'd just learned to intellectualize our pain better than most.
We had language. We had insight. But we didn't have intimacy.
I started writing again. Not for work. Not for panels or publication. Just for me. One entry started like this:
He wasn't the villain. He was the echo.
Because it finally clicked. Andre didn't trigger me—he mirrored me.
His calm wasn't distance—it was how I dissociate. His silence wasn't cruelty—it was the same silence I'd used on men who wanted more than I could give. When he analyzed instead of connected, I hated it…
But hadn't I done the same? Hadn't I weaponized self-awareness to stay untouched? Hadn't I buried emotion beneath control and called it "being strong"?
He wasn't just like me. He was me.
And that's why it felt so personal when we couldn't love each other. Because if he couldn't love me—this version of me I thought was finally whole—then maybe I wasn't as healed as I believed.
That realization didn't crush me. It cleared me.
I stopped pretending I was a finished product. Stopped trying to impress my therapist. Stopped hiding my softness beneath curated strength.
I let myself cry. Not because I lost him. But because I was tired of losing me in relationships that looked good on paper but starved me in private.
That was the beginning of something else.
Not a reinvention. Not a glow-up. Just… a return. To softness. To truth. To not needing to know everything in order to be worthy of love.
When I thought of Andre now, I didn't feel bitterness. I felt recognition. He came into my life not to break me, but to reflect the exact wound I still hadn't touched.
And for that—I whispered into the empty room—"Thank you."
That night, I opened a fresh journal. One without prompts or expectations. I lit a lavender-scented candle, sat cross-legged on the floor, and wrote a letter—not to Andre, but to myself.
"Dear Me, You've been so strong for so long. You don't have to be perfect to be loved. You're allowed to need. You're allowed to rest."
I cried, not from sadness, but from the relief of finally hearing what I needed to hear—from me.
The next day, I wore my oldest jeans and a faded UP Diliman shirt, hair unbrushed, and walked to the community library. I borrowed a poetry collection by Edith Tiempo, sat under a tree outside, and read slowly, letting each word sink.
A group of students passed by, giggling about thesis deadlines and heartbreak. One of them said, "Sana all emotionally stable."
And for the first time, I didn't flinch. I smiled.
Maybe emotional stability wasn't a destination. Maybe it was a decision—moment by moment—to choose truth over fear.
I passed by a taho vendor on the way home. "Taho po!" he called, ladle already dipping into the warm silken tofu.
"One cup, Kuya," I said, handing over the coins.
As I sat on the curb, sipping taho, sun on my face, spoon scraping the last of the arnibal, I thought: This is the life I wanted all along. One where I don't have to audition for love. One where I don't disappear in someone else's shadow.
Andre helped show me that. Not by staying. But by leaving.
And now I stay. For me.
No more performing clarity. No more chasing men who speak the right language but can't hold the right space.
I am not unfinished. I am unfolding.
That night, I visited my childhood room for the first time in years. My mom had kept it almost exactly the same—posters of my high school bands, a photo of me in a debate competition, the tiny glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling.
I lay on the bed and looked up at them, remembering how they used to feel like constellations, like safety. I thought about the girl who used to stare at those stars and wonder when she'd feel enough. I whispered, "You are. You always were."
Before leaving, I took one of the stars down and tucked it into my wallet.
A reminder.
I returned to my apartment and made adobo from scratch. Let it simmer while Nora Aunor's voice played softly from the speaker. I called my Lola just to say I missed her.
I folded my laundry with care. Took time to oil my scalp. Massaged lotion into my elbows. I wore my favorite old pajamas. No one would see me in them. That wasn't the point.
I was learning to stay with myself.
I began spending my weekends offline—reading at the park, tending to the tiny basil plant I kept on my windowsill. I baked banana bread without a recipe and let the apartment smell like brown sugar and healing.
And this time, when I reached for my phone, it wasn't to check for anyone's name.
It was to set an alarm.
I had a pottery class the next morning.
Not to fill time.
But to keep building a life that felt like mine