Have you ever had a relationship end while you were abroad? How did you handle it?

I came to Barcelona for someone.

Now I’m staying for myself.

A relationship ended abruptly, my plans changed, and suddenly I found myself alone in a city I had never been to before, in a country I barely know the language, having to reorganize a trip that until then had belonged to a completely different version of my life.

She was first my boss, then a friend, then a business partner and girlfriend.

I had trusted her deeply, both personally and professionally. But when the relationship finally broke down, I saw a side of her that I had not expected. She had an explosive reaction, things became chaotic very quickly, and she asked me to leave her home with most of my trip still ahead of me.

That hurt more than the breakup itself.

It was the realization that someone I trusted was not quite the person I thought she was.

Fortunately, I can support myself. I could get a hotel, reorganize my plans, and figure things out. I know how lucky I am to be able to say that.

Still, this is my first time outside Brazil. I had never had to navigate a hotel alone abroad, deal with everything in another language, or suddenly rebuild ten days of a trip in a city where almost everything is unfamiliar.

And strangely, what I feel is not exactly despair.

It is more like a kind of silence.

Today I sat in Turó del Putxet, in Gràcia, surrounded by trees, and spent some time watching the wind move through their branches.

I wrote one line:

I have been thinking a lot about Alberto Caeiro, one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms.

Especially about the idea that maybe life becomes harder when we insist that it should be something other than what it is.

Not in the sense of accepting everything passively.

If something needs to change, you change it.

If you need to leave, you leave.

If you need to say no, you say no.

But once something has already happened, there comes a point where mentally fighting against it starts to feel as pointless as arguing with the rain.

You may not like being wet.

It is still raining.

So that is what I have been trying to do.

Not turn this into a tragedy.

Not turn it into a lesson.

Not turn it into some grand story about “overcoming adversity.”

Just let life happen without demanding that it justify itself to me.

The relationship ended.

There were good parts.

There were bad parts.

I do not need to erase either of them.

I also do not need to turn her into a villain to understand that we probably should not have stayed together.

Ending it was my decision.

Some things can be important without being permanent.

Some people belong to a stretch of your life, not the whole road.

That does not make that stretch meaningless.

The curious part is that before any of this started, I already had a plan.

I wanted to travel alone.

Work remotely.

Go places without needing a particularly good reason to be there.

Return to Brazil and start traveling more through my own country.

Maybe, slowly, build a more nomadic life.

That plan got suspended for a while.

And then, through a sequence of events that was considerably more chaotic than I would have chosen, life simply dropped me right back into it.

So now I am in Barcelona.

I have a few days ahead of me.

The Festa Major de Gràcia is about to begin.

There are streets I have never walked, people I have never met, cafés I have never sat in, and a great number of things that have not happened yet.

And I think that is what interests me most now.

Not “moving on.”

Not “bouncing back.”

Just continuing.

There is something beautiful about realizing that a chapter can end without you immediately needing to understand the whole book.

Sometimes you just turn the page.

And see what is on the other side.