Ever seen someone hard launch their breakup? Now you have 😃 At the start of this year, I promised to be more honest with myself and practice true vulnerability, so here goes. This breakup happened at a time when my life was already undergoing significant changes and it was the catalyst that broke me completely. No one tells you how hard grieving over a break up is, because it is not just grieving over someone or an imagined future. It’s grieving over your past self and the version of yourself that you thought existed. Self-doubt creeps in as you become disillusioned with your own reality and you constantly question whether you are making the right decisions for yourself. Not to mention, the shame that comes with being honest with yourself. “How could I have let this happen to myself?” No one tells you how much self-hatred is involved in this process before you finally learn how to embrace that part of your past by giving yourself grace and compassion. Understanding that you did what you could with the amount of information you had at that time and that was what protected you then. That is the quietest and most profound forgiveness you can grant yourself. A lot of it is also realising that there’s a balance in understanding the dynamics of any relationship. Looking in too much causes excessive self-blame and guilt. Looking outwards too much prevents yourself from taking accountability for your own actions and hinders you from seeing your own weaknesses. Ultimately, you are the co-creator of your reality, you can’t control how people act but you are responsible for how you think and respond to others. You can always play the blame game and point fingers at everyone and yourself but at the end of the day, it was really no one’s fault. It’s just…humans being humans. We are all flawed. All you can do is take those lessons and move forward. Now of course, moving forward is easier said than done, because you need to feel all your emotions to the full extent without running away - the good, the “bad” and the in between before letting go. Stop making excuses for yourself and get obsessed with doing the inner work and find the peace that you ever so wanted. Because if you don’t, you will find all sorts of different narratives to feed that core wound/belief that “you are not good enough”. But the truth is. You are. Why do we keep needing to feel that we need to do/achieve something to feel like we are “good enough”? We need to give ourselves permission to just exist! Same goes for one of the many lessons in love - Love doesn’t have to be “earned”. Because it should be a bestowed gift by just simply existing! Much of this process is trying to figure out how to bring me back to myself and live in the present. The pain might have been almost unbearable at first, but somewhere along the way, I started feeling excited and alive because I am reminded of the beauty of pain (not being sadistic ofc haha). I’m glad that it happened when it happened because damn, rediscovering myself has to be the most fulfilling chapter of my life. More importantly, I allowed myself to just be a human. An amazingly, beautiful and flawed human being. May this post find anyone who needs to hear this or future me who needs a reminder. xoxo - Kai Xuan ❤️ - @burntbacon._