Last night, as she bled the paint off of her brushes and I brushed my teeth, my roommate Akiko told me I was strong. With evidence in fact pointing to the contrary – I cried for three minutes straight the night prior – I smiled at her, surprised. Thanks, Akiko, I said. What a great compliment. She looked back at me and said, You’ve never stopped saying you’ll be okay. In the future, you know you’ll be okay, and that makes you strong.

She’s right. While Adele’s “Someone Like You” still makes me burst into tears, the emptiness in my stomach has almost left and life is looking up. All heartbreaks should be this productive: I’ve deactivated my Facebook account, stopped checking my phone every minute, and started re-establishing the relationships in my Los Angeles life. It’s quite beautiful actually: my friends happen to be the most open, supportive, loving people in my life, and sometimes it takes a bit of sadness to realize it.

I called my friend Terry yesterday, and not wanting to scare him, said I was “kinda depressed”. He responded immediately, asking if I wanted to tag along to his shopping trip. I promptly agreed. Sae Hee too has offered so much support – I don’t know if he knows how far a little indignation on my behalf goes, but it goes so far! Kathy and Akiko have been incredible.

I know that it takes both parties involved in any sort of friendship or relationship to make it work. And despite our chance meetings in Atlanta and Orlando, and our planned adventures in Boston and Los Angeles, he and I could not envision a working long-distance relationship. Him because of his feelings for another girl, me because of my fear of becoming the control freak I often end up being. As such, things had to end the way they did: three-hour Skype sessions and hourly text messages were not sustainable and took us away from our real lives – the lives we still have to lead in California and in Maine.

I don’t blame him or feel any anger towards him; oddly enough, I want him to be happy with his ex-girlfriend and would like to rebuild a friendship sometime down the line. I am glad he could be honest with me.

With that said, I should not be sad; in fact, I grow less sad and more hopeful by the minute. I have this faith that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. And that’s the beautiful thing about life and chance and destiny; we don’t know what will come but must know in our hearts that life will burst on spontaneously and with the utmost surprises.

It wasn’t love, or even lust, just pure hope and trust and faith in the future of two people. And even with him moving on 3,000 miles away, that faith remains. Faith in the best future for both of us as individuals, faith that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. Faith that we will be okay. That everything will be okay.