Maybe I’m Just Not Ready to Fall in Love Again

A few days ago, Tulus released a new song. I wasn’t looking for something that would make me cry, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about him. I simply pressed play because it was a new song from an artist whose music has always felt comforting to me. Then the chorus arrived.

“Mungkin aku sedang tak bisa, tak bisa jatuh cinta. Membuka hati ‘tuk apapun, siapapun.”

For a moment, it felt as if someone had quietly translated a feeling I had been carrying for months but had never been able to put into words. Suddenly, this wasn’t just another beautiful song. It became a mirror. And for the first time in a long time, I stopped pretending that I had completely moved on.

People often think moving on means forgetting someone. They imagine that, eventually, a person’s name will stop crossing your mind, the memories will fade, and your heart will naturally make room for someone new. I used to believe that too. But lately, I’ve realized that moving on isn’t always about forgetting. Sometimes, it’s about learning how to continue living while a part of you still instinctively reaches for someone who no longer belongs in your life.

I’ve met new people since things ended with him. Some of them were genuinely kind, thoughtful, and probably deserved a version of me that was fully present. Every now and then, my friends would ask whether I’d finally met someone new, and I’d simply smile and answer, “Not yet.” What I never admitted was that I wasn’t really looking. Not because I wanted him back, but because some part of me still hadn’t figured out how to exist without comparing everyone to him.

Every conversation somehow reminds me of the conversations we used to have. Every thoughtful person reminds me of the way he listened to every insignificant story I wanted to tell. Every late-night notification reminds me of the excitement I used to feel whenever his name appeared on my phone. And no matter how unfair it is to the people I meet today, they all seem to arrive carrying the impossible responsibility of competing with a memory they never created. The cruel thing about memories is that they soften the sharp edges. They preserve the warmth while quietly blurring the reasons why everything fell apart.

What I miss the most isn’t even the romance anymore. It’s the ordinary life we accidentally built together. I miss exchanging messages throughout the workday until our chat became so long that scrolling all the way back felt impossible. I miss waiting for his random life updates, no matter how insignificant they were. I miss the six-hour phone calls that somehow never felt long enough, and the comfort of knowing that at the end of every exhausting workday, there would always be someone waiting to hear every little detail about it. Looking back, I don’t think I only fell in love with him. I fell in love with the rhythm of a life where I never had to wonder who I’d tell my stories to.

When I lost him, I didn’t just lose a relationship. I lost my favorite routine. I lost the habit of reaching for my phone without thinking. I lost the excitement of waiting for someone’s message. I lost the feeling of always having one person who knew everything happening in my life. It turns out that losing someone isn’t only about losing the person. Sometimes it’s about losing the version of your everyday life that quietly became your definition of happiness.

Since then, people have given me every piece of advice imaginable. They tell me to travel, spend more time outside, meet new people, stay busy, discover new hobbies, and read books I’ve never read before. Listening to this song reminded me of all those well-intentioned suggestions.

“Tambah gerak tubuhmu. Baca buku yang baru. Ragam saran brilian yang belum kunjung jadi penawar.”

They’re not wrong. I’ve done almost everything people suggested. I moved to another city. I built a completely different life. I focused on my career. I met incredible people. I learned how to enjoy my own company. From the outside, it probably looks like I’ve healed. It probably looks like I’ve moved on.

But grief has never cared about appearances. It doesn’t disappear because your calendar is full or because you’ve learned how to smile again. It patiently waits inside ordinary moments until a familiar melody, an old screenshot, or a random memory quietly reminds you that it’s still there. Sometimes all it takes is one song for months of carefully hidden emotions to come rushing back.

Then another verse came.

“Untuk yang hilang dariku belakangan. Sedang kucoba memahami alurnya. Semoga segera kutemukan jawaban. Tapi kini kurayakan hampa ini.”

That verse broke me even more, because maybe the thing I’ve been grieving isn’t only him. Maybe I’ve been grieving myself. Somewhere between loving him and losing him, I also lost a version of myself that I haven’t been able to find again. The version of me who trusted without hesitation, who looked forward to tomorrow because tomorrow meant another conversation with him, who believed love was supposed to feel safe, and who wasn’t afraid to imagine an entire future with another person.

I’ve spent months asking myself what exactly disappeared after everything fell apart. Was it my ability to trust? My excitement about meeting someone new? My willingness to be vulnerable again? Or was it simply the part of me that believed people stayed when they said they would? I still don’t know the answer. All I know is that I’ve spent far more time trying to find myself than trying to find another person. And maybe that’s why I haven’t fallen in love again. Not because there aren’t good people, and not because I’m secretly waiting for him to come back, but because I’m still searching for the version of myself that existed before my heart learned how deeply it could break.

For the longest time, I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. Why does his name still cross my mind when I least expect it? Why do I still wonder what life would have looked like if he had simply been a better man? Why do I still revisit our old conversations on nights when I miss being understood? Why does every new beginning somehow remind me of an ending that happened months ago? Eventually, I realized that maybe I had been asking the wrong questions. Maybe healing isn’t measured by how quickly I can love somebody else. Maybe healing is measured by how gently I learn to love myself again after losing someone I once believed would be part of my forever.

When the song reached its final lines, I found myself listening instead of crying.

“Mungkin ini siklusnya. Sudah garis jalannya. Esok, esok akan lebih elok.”

For the first time in months, I didn’t feel pressured to move on. I didn’t feel guilty for still missing someone who had hurt me, and I didn’t feel ashamed that my heart still hesitates whenever someone tries to enter it. Instead, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time: permission. Permission to stop measuring my healing against everyone else’s. Permission to admit that grief doesn’t disappear simply because enough time has passed. Permission to believe that maybe I’m not broken at all. Maybe I’m simply healing at my own pace.

I don’t know when I’ll be ready to fall in love again. I don’t know when meeting someone new will stop feeling like comparing them to a memory. I don’t know when his name will stop quietly appearing in my mind every time life becomes overwhelming. Maybe that day is closer than I think. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, I’ve stopped trying to rush my heart toward a finish line that doesn’t exist, because if losing him taught me anything, it’s that healing cannot be forced. It can only be lived, one ordinary day at a time.

So maybe Tulus is right.

Maybe this emptiness is just a season. Maybe this is simply how grief works. Maybe not every heart heals at the same pace. And maybe I’m not struggling to move on from him anymore. Maybe I’m still learning how to move on from the life I thought I was going to have with him, because those are two very different kinds of grief. One is losing a person. The other is losing the future you had already imagined with them. And somehow, the second one has always been the harder goodbye.

Until I can finally make peace with that, maybe the song is right.

“Mungkin aku memang sedang tak bisa jatuh cinta.”