Grieving the Man Who Broke Me

Understanding the Emotional Turmoil

The hours afterwards are mostly a blur. I remember my friend taking me back to her place. She got me into her bed, wrapped me in a big blanket, and asked me to please rest. I was so emotionally drained from the experience that I passed out under that heavy blanket and slept.

Some moments, though, are burned into my memory with painful clarity. Like the weight of my phone in my hand as I started telling people what I never imagined I’d have to say: He was gone. By suicide.

My exchange with his best friend still echoes in my head:

"I'm here with the police and they found him, he's gone."

"Gone where?"

"He killed himself."

I had found out—not as his girlfriend, not even as his friend—but as the last person who still cared enough to look for him.

I started writing messages to his friends, to his former colleagues, to people who knew him only as the charming, confident, ambitious version. Not the volatile one. Not the cruel one. Not the man who shattered me.

The condolences started pouring in. And so did the confusion. What no one knew was that I wasn’t mourning the same person they were. I was mourning someone who had deeply, repeatedly hurt me. Someone who had left me emotionally bruised, physically harmed, and psychologically exhausted. Grieving someone who hurt you is a special kind of madness. You don’t know which version of them you’re crying for—or if you should be crying at all.

The Emotional Whiplash

I wasn’t prepared for the emotional whiplash that followed. People started reaching out—some with kind words, some with questions, some with assumptions. “You must be devastated,” they said. And I was. But not in the way they thought. I was devastated to have lost the man I had loved for almost ten years of my life. I was devastated by the years I’d lost, by the trauma I was still unpacking, and mostly by the deep, cavernous guilt whispering, maybe I could have saved him.

But I was also angry. So, so angry. Angry that after everything, I was the one left picking up the pieces—again. That he got the final word. That I never got a real apology. That he could still take up so much space in my life, even in death. And angry at myself for feeling anything at all.

I thought the hardest part would be finding out he was gone. I was wrong. The hardest part was what came after—the chaos, the questions, the guilt, and the grief. I didn’t know how to grieve him, but I also didn’t know how not to.

The Complexity of Love and Grief

The truth is, there were moments of real love. Or what I thought was love. Memories that made me laugh and others that made me sick to my stomach. I kept trying to organize it all into something that made sense. But there’s no neat emotional box for this kind of grief.

In the days that followed, I existed in survival mode—crying one minute, completely numb the next. And of course, because nothing involving him ever came without chaos, the aftermath was complicated and messy.

The detective informed me they had found a handwritten letter and a set of videos. It would take days before they could release them—standard procedure, they said—to confirm there was nothing criminal or harmful on them.

Those days were a haze of uncertainty and exhaustion. My family and friends took care of me because I was barely functioning. I saw my therapist, started medication to take the edge off, and spent hours on the phone with his best friend—the only person who could truly understand the confusing mix of grief, anger, and relief.

When the police asked if there were family members to contact, I felt that familiar knot in my stomach. He had been estranged from his parents, but I knew his sister had recently moved back to Zurich. Meeting her for the first time, at the police station, after his death, was surreal. How do you express condolences to someone you’ve never met? It was also so very delicate as I was trying to preserve a kind image of him. I didn't want to add to people's grief by distorting the image they had of him. In the end, we all have different images of people we know. I did not want to impose my views on anyone else and complicate this delicate situation even more.

So when we met at the station, the detective told us: there was a letter and thirteen videos. My immediate reaction was laughter—dark, involuntary laughter. Of course he’d leave thirteen videos. Of course he saw himself as the rewritten main character of “13 Reasons Why.”

When I finally went home and opened the envelope, what I found wasn’t a goodbye; it was a will. He had laid out everything in cold, practical terms. He said he’d left me enough money to pay off my debts, of which some was on his own credit cards. He listed passwords for his bank accounts, his laptop, his email, his social media, as if I were meant to step into the role of executor of his life.

He even asked me to give some money to the girl he had dated right after me. He described her as “a good girl” who had had a tough life and “deserved this.” It was so characteristic of him—the mix of control, generosity, and moral theatre.

There were also requests about the personal videos he had recorded. Some were meant to be sent to specific people, others he left to my discretion—“maybe there is something positive that can come from this story,” he wrote. He wanted me to thank some people for their kindness and to apologize to others he felt he had let down.

And then, at the end, came the words I think he believed would soften everything: that I had been “an extraordinary partner” and that he would “always love” me. Reading it was like being pulled underwater. It wasn’t a love letter, it wasn’t an apology, it wasn’t even really a goodbye. It was a set of instructions. A manual for me to follow in the wake of his destruction. A way to make me carry him one last time.

Planning the Funeral: A Surreal Experience

The next thing I had to do was plan his funeral with his sister, a woman I’d only just met and was grieving the loss of her big brother. It felt like some strange performance, being asked to honor a man who had almost destroyed me next to someone who deeply loved him and still looked up to him.

I texted his friend: “The last year we were together was the worst time of my life. I’m still trying to forgive him for everything he did, but I still feel responsible. It’s so weird.”

I felt as if his death had forced me into forgiveness I wasn’t ready to give—like grief had rewritten the rules, erasing the past without asking me first. I was still trying to digest years of damage while being asked to grieve him properly.

It was beyond surreal. Organizing his funeral became a way to survive the chaos, a distraction from the insanity I was living. Numbness was my default setting. So I medicated myself—antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills—and went through the motions of planning a farewell for the man who had almost managed to destroy me.

The Contradictions of Grief

Even now, I don’t know what to do with the contradictions he left behind. The man I loved and the man who broke me are both gone, and yet, somehow, both still here.

Grieving him meant grieving the version of myself that tolerated too much, forgave too quickly, and loved without boundaries.

Maybe that’s the cruelest part of losing someone like him—you’re not just mourning their death; you’re mourning the person you were before they shattered you.

In this journey of grief, I’ve learned that healing isn’t linear. It’s a messy, chaotic process that requires patience and self-compassion. I’ve found solace in sharing my story and connecting with others who understand the complexities of love and loss.

So, if you’re navigating similar waters, know that you’re not alone. Let’s embrace the chaos together and find empowerment in our shared experiences.