Some years break you. This was that year.
It seems like such a long time ago — him insisting I open the laptop so I could see what his gift was. Now all I have are the good memories. And sometimes that’s the hardest part.
2013 was the year everything I thought was stable quietly fell apart. By the time December came around, I was sitting with a separation, a newborn, a legal process just beginning, and eighteen days’ worth of grief I was still learning to name.
Looking back now, writing this on the first day of 2014, here is what that year actually looked like.
December started with a betrayal I didn’t see coming. I found out he had been seeing someone close to both of us — the same person who had once called me substandard. It should have hurt more than it did. Maybe I had already been quietly bracing for something. I wrote about it in When Karma Shows Up Right on Time — not to make a scandal, but because pretending it didn’t happen felt worse.
Six days after the split, I was already trying to figure out next steps. I didn’t know where to start, so I turned to the people around me. Our HR at work pointed me toward GWAVE — Gender Watch Against Violence and Exploitation — a local NGO in Dumaguete that handles more than just VAWC cases. Making that first phone call felt small, but it was the first thing that felt like forward motion. I wrote about it in Finding Help as a Solo Mom: My First Call to GWAVE.
By Day 16, I admitted what I had been trying not to. I missed him. No shortcuts around that part. No fast forward button. Just the missing and the waiting for it to ease. I wrote a short honest post about it — Day 16: Okay, I Admit I Miss Him — because putting it into words felt better than carrying it alone.
Day 17, I went looking for something practical to hold on to. I found a list of 28 things to stop and start doing when you’re trying to move on. Not groundbreaking advice, but the kind of list you need when you’re in the thick of it and can’t think clearly. I shared it in 28 Ways to Move On From a Past Relationship and kept it for myself as much as for anyone else.
Day 18 was Christmas, and it was the day I said goodbye. I didn’t expect the holidays to become the setting for a goodbye. But some endings choose their own timing. I wrote about it in Day 18: On Letting Go — about how letting go doesn’t happen cleanly, how it comes in pieces, how the world keeps moving regardless.
2013 was the worst year I had lived through up to that point. But writing this on the first morning of 2014, there is also something else underneath all of it — something quieter and harder to name. The year that broke the most things also made room for something I hadn’t expected: the slow, uncomfortable, necessary work of rebuilding myself.
That has to count for something.
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