I noticed that I write between finished accounts and new ones. I simply cannot distract myself during an ongoing project. Perhaps that’s just how I operate. Like a horse.

Lately though, I have been in such a lull that it took me quite some time to snap out of it. Spacing out between meetings, sleeping late, staring at the blank screen, picking on food, no drive at all. I was beginning to be pissed at myself for being unproductive, but no matter how I drag myself from one meeting to another, conduct brainstorming sessions, I still preferred to lay down and sleep. Sure, we do get tired sometimes, and we should allow ourselves to rest for a moment or two, to take a breath and calm ourselves when things don’t pan out the way you wanted it to. When situations or people disappoint us, it takes a while to get over it. Recently, I had a growing share of people promising things but not fulfilling their end of the bargain. I don’t bother going after them anymore. I learned my lesson not to humiliate myself that way. Let them be. Let karma take care of them, I always thought.

When I lost a recent lover to natural circumstances, I was in a state of denial that thinking about him was not an option, and that work was my refuge, even my strength. While most of us succumb to depression, I didn’t. I thought I was done with love, and that I never really loved him anyway; he was just someone who happened to be there. I cannot afford to be weak. Many people depend on me, and I cannot ignore my responsibilities.

I was at a Funeral Home visiting a friend whose father died when I heard a loud wail coming from the other room. I had a phone call to make and stepped outside. A new body was being laid to rest in the other room, and a trail of family members followed the coffin being placed in the room’s center. I proceeded to make the call, and was about to head back when I heard whispers from the old ladies. Suicide. Boyfriend. Young. Seventeen. He left her. Pregnant.

I looked up in their direction and saw a huge portrait of a very young, beautiful girl being set up near the coffin. That’s all I needed to know to make out her story. I felt my knees buckle and my heart swell and before my parents saw me, I rushed to the car and locked myself in and cried.

I cannot be that girl. I am not weak. I am not weak. So he fucked me over. He broke his promise. But who am I to keep him?

I’m not exactly sure if I miss the person; I think I miss the routine more. Of talking until I fall asleep, exhausted, and waking up to find him still there. Of being reminded to take water and Vitamin C’s everyday. Or being sung Happy Birthday to in the middle of the airport terminal before boarding flight, and the weekly bouquet of roses. And because he saw right through me, and fulfilled all my wishes and secret dreams unknowingly, I grew rather fond of him. He took care of me. He really, really took care of me. What I didn’t know was that I was in deeper than I thought I was.

I was prepared for such a loss, always have been. But I never learned to grieve properly. Not until now.