It wasn't Matteo who broke me.
It was the silence that followed.
Not the romantic kind—the cinematic, candlelit sadness.
No.
This was fluorescent.
Loud in its quiet.
Sharp in its stillness.
I came home and couldn't find myself in the mirror. Just a woman in expensive linen, staring at her reflection like it had betrayed her.
It was strange.
I had said goodbye so many times before.
Men had left.
I had left.
Love had unraveled, always.
But this one… this one peeled something back.
Because it wasn't just him I missed.
It was me—the version of me that existed when I stopped performing.
The girl barefoot in piazzas.
The woman who let herself laugh with her whole body.
The one who didn't measure her worth in output or praise or being "hard to get."
I missed her.
And without Matteo, she felt like a ghost too.
I tried to go back to work.
To meetings and strategy decks and inboxes with bold red numbers.
But it all felt… brittle.
Even the job offer I'd once prayed for now sat unopened in my inbox like a dare.
I walked past a bakery one morning and the smell of bread—yeasty, warm, dusted with flour—made me pause. Matteo used to stop mid-sentence when he smelled fresh bread. "Life is too short not to follow the scent of bread," he'd say.
I stood there until the light changed and the cars started honking.
Everyone told me I was glowing post-vacation.
I smiled, said thank you, made a joke about Italian food.
No one asked why I started crying while slicing tomatoes two nights later.
Or why the smell of basil made my chest cave in.
No one asked why I couldn't finish a single episode of anything anymore.
Or why I kept my suitcase half-packed, like maybe I'd still go back.
Matteo didn't break me.
But his leaving opened the door to every loss I'd tucked away.
The father who never came back.
The men who chose softer women.
The friend who stopped calling when I became "too much."
And me—always me—telling myself,
"It's fine. I'm fine."
Even when I was splintering.
That night, I curled into bed—not to sleep, but to finally mourn.
Mourn every time I held myself together so someone else wouldn't feel guilty.
Mourn every exit I called growth instead of grief.
Mourn every moment I thought letting go was a form of winning.
I let it all break.
And for once, I didn't rush to clean it up.
Didn't package the pain into a paragraph.
Didn't try to extract meaning.
I just sat in it.
Curled on the floor, wrapped in the cardigan I wore the night we watched the stars from that rooftop in Florence. I could still hear him saying, "You don't have to sparkle for me." And I had believed him.
Stupid, soft, hopeful me.
I got up. Went to the kitchen. Boiled water.
And made myself a cup of salabat.
I hadn't made ginger tea in years—not since I left home. My Lola used to boil it for me every time my voice cracked from too much crying. "Pampalakas ng dibdib," she would say. Strength for the chest.
I drank slowly, the spice of it burning my throat in the best way. Reminding me that healing doesn't always taste sweet.
Then I turned on the radio—old FM static, half-Tagalog half-English love songs—and let it play as I stood barefoot on the cold tiles.
Somewhere between Nora Aunor and Gary V, I remembered what my mom used to tell me after every heartbreak:
"Hindi lahat ng masarap ay kailangang manatili. May mga taong pampalasa lang sa buhay. Hindi pangmatagalan, pero mahalaga pa rin."
Not everything delicious is meant to stay.
Some people are just seasoning.
Not permanent—but necessary.
And maybe Matteo was that.
A reminder of sweetness.
Of slow mornings and honest laughter.
Of what it felt like to be chosen with no agenda.
But also a reminder that I was still learning how to choose myself.
The next morning, I walked to the palengke and bought flowers for no reason. White sampaguita bundled with brown twine. The kind my Lola used to hang by the altar. The smell always reminded me of quiet faith.
I put them by the window.
Then I unpacked my suitcase completely.
Folded every shirt.
Hung the linen dress I wore when we danced near the Arno river.
Tucked his shirt—the one he left behind—into a drawer I didn't open often.
I didn't throw it away.
Not yet.
But I stopped sleeping with it under my pillow.
I called a friend that afternoon.
Laughed—genuinely—for the first time in days.
She told me she was proud of me.
And for once, I believed it.
I lit a candle that night—not for anyone else, not for closure, not even for ceremony.
Just to remind myself that even after the deepest dark, I could still create light.
And as I watched the flame flicker and dance in its little glass bowl, I whispered something into the quiet.
Something I hadn't said in years.
Not to a man.
Not to a mirror.
Just to me.
"I want to stay."
Not just here.
Not just in this room.
But in this body. In this life.
In this strange, grief-splashed, healing-in-progress love story I was finally writing for myself.
Not because Matteo left.
But because I was still here.
And that had to mean something.