1. Waking up and the first thing that you feel is the sense of having something inside you ripped out. It's not exactly your heart that was missing, because you can feel it beating really fast like it is scared of something. You haven't exactly registered yet into your consciousness that he is gone, but your limbs, the tips of your fingertips, are tingly with weakness. Something has changed. Something was misplaced.



2. Because you are so used to reach out to your phone, because normally there is a text in your inbox that will make you smile, you look at your notifications and there is none. And that is when it sinks in. That is when you remember what happened the night before, the goodbye, the hurtful words, and the finality in his decision.

3. You are torn between waking up and going back to sleep. There is so much to be done today. And yet you are afraid to face the day, the first day of navigating through life without him, the first day of going through the motions without his presence. You know what it's like to be alone. But when you met him and fell into the comforts of having someone, you somehow lost the confidence in facing the harshness of life without someone who provides you with security.

4. In your morning prayer, you wanted to pray that everything goes back to what it used to be. But you didn't pray for it. Because hoping means opening up a little more to disappointment. You are wrestling with enough disappointments already. So you stay a little longer on the prayer mat, with your forehead pressed on the floor, you cry the hardest you have cried in a long time. And you tell your Lord, "I know you know what is in my heart. And this heart of mine cries out to you"

5. You come down to the kitchen and make yourself a cup of coffee. You are a big girl, you tell yourself. It's going to be alright, you convince yourself. And your mother wakes up too. You try to act normal. A part of you wants to hug her, tell her someone hurt you, like you used to run to her when you were a little girl. But your mother bore so much pain already. So you spare her. You know she will hurt too when she find out you broke your heart again. She liked that boy, though she won't admit it openly. You caught her smile when she saw those roses by your bedside.

6. You go through your routine of having breakfast with your family. You smile and engage with conversation with them. Under the mask that you put on your face, you are crumbling with them. You push back the tears so hard that you taste it at the back of your mouth. So you wash away the saltiness with the bitterness in your morning coffee.

7. As you put on your makeup, somehow your BB cream won't cling to your face like it used to. So you pile it on, masking the pain away. No amount of eye makeup can hide the swollen eyelids and under eye from all the crying from last night. You swipe on your lipstick to hide your pale lips. And when you are done painting on a face, you look at yourself. Despite the perfect arch of you brows and the glow from your highlighter, you don't feel beautiful anymore.

(To my best friend Hannah, to my Danny, cousin Ham, and to every girl who has her heart broken.)