The First Morning Without the Weight: My Valentine to Myself

I am Debbie Lim –

This morning, I woke up, and the air felt different. Lighter.

I didn’t want to move.

My little dog was sprawled across my chest, her warm weight rising and falling with each sleepy breath. She was completely out, lost in whatever dreams tiny dogs have, and I just lay there, frozen in the best possible way. I didn’t want to shift. I didn’t want to start the day.

I just wanted to stay in that moment, feeling so utterly loved.

My phone was nearby—thank goodness—and I managed to reach for it without disturbing her. Click. She stirred just enough to look up at me with those sleepy, half-mast eyes, the kind of look that says “I trust you completely”… and then she tucked her head back down and went right back to sleep on my chest.

That photo. Those sleepy eyes. That trust.

That is the moment I want to frame. Not a vase of flowers from someone who couldn’t be bothered. Not a late dinner that was never planned. That photo.

Eventually, she woke up for real, and then—WHAM! The daily playful attack of love began. Wiggles. Kisses. Tail wagging like she hadn’t seen me in years, even though she’d been sleeping on me all night. Pure, unfiltered joy.

And lying there, laughing as she attacked me with affection, it hit me: The weight is gone.

For nearly four decades, I carried something I didn’t even realize was a weight. It was a void, shaped vaguely like a florist’s vase. For all those years, I watched February 14th come and go—but I watched it mostly in silence. Not once in my entire 37 years, I never received any flowers, a card or anything… ever. 

Because here is the thing about my story: I spent most of my adult life working from home. I didn’t have the front-row seat to the delivery-men walking through the office door with red roses. I didn’t see colleagues blush over their desks. The evidence of romance happening to other people wasn’t on display for me. It was happening out there, in a world I only glimpsed through a screen or heard about secondhand.

The isolation made it easier to ignore. Easier to accept.

I spent my entire adult life with a man who had a perfectly crafted response to the absence of romance. He would say, with practiced certainty, “I have said for years that it is not what you do on hallmark holidays, it’s what you do in between those days.”

For the longest time, I just accepted that quote. I didn’t understand it, not really, but I nodded along anyway because questioning it felt like a bother. Asking for more felt like a bother. Wanting flowers on Valentine’s Day? A bother. Wanting even a card or a poem written on a piece of paper? A bother.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that wanting anything for myself made me difficult. So I stayed quiet. I told myself his words meant something deeper than I could grasp. But the truth was simpler: I was confused, and I felt like an inconvenience every time I considered asking for more.

The truth is far simpler and sadder. It wasn’t a philosophy; it was an excuse. He was simply cheap. He was simply self-absorbed. He simply didn’t want to expend energy on me.

This year, something shifted in how I saw it. We were texting early in the day, and I finally said the words I had been holding in for years: “Enjoy your first Valentine’s Day dinner with your new ‘friend.'”

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t say I was wrong. He didn’t correct me or push back. He just… let it sit there. Silence.

No denial. No explanation. Just the quiet confirmation I didn’t even realize I needed.

I wasn’t asking about us. I had stopped asking about us long ago. But in that moment, with those words hanging in the air between us, I finally saw it clearly. The energy he would never expend on me was already being offered to someone else. Had probably been offered to others all along.

And you know what? That silence set me free.

I had spent years asking him to make me a priority. Asking plainly, directly, vulnerably. And he refused. Not with anger, not with drama—just with a quiet, consistent unwillingness to change. He didn’t want to. It was that simple.

The letting go wasn’t a dramatic fight. It was about looking back over nearly four decades and realizing: he just didn’t want to give me anything, a surprise, romantic gestures, anything.

So, I shut the door. For good.

And this morning, I woke up happy. Happy with a tiny dog on my chest, looking up at me with sleepy eyes before choosing to trust me enough to drift back to sleep.

I am mourning the woman I used to be, the one who accepted the crumbs for all those years. But I am wildly, desperately in love with who I am today. The woman who is finally the priority.

So, what now?

Now, the subject changes. The subject is me. Debbie Lim.

I am single. I am in the final chapter of my life, but it is not an epilogue. It is a brand new beginning. It is the chapter where I stop waiting for someone else to water me and I learn to grow in the sun.

I want to learn who I am without the weight of waiting. I want to see what it feels like to buy my own flowers, to take myself on late dates, to fill the “in between” days with joy that I generate myself. And this time, I won’t be watching from home. I’ll be out there, living it.

And I want you, the reader, to come on this path with me.

If you have ever settled for crumbs, if you have ever tried to decode a clever quote that was really just a cover for neglect, if you are standing at the precipice of your own new chapter and are scared to jump—come with me.

Let’s be single and ready. Not just ready for a partner, but ready for life. Let’s see what happens when we finally take up all the space we were always meant to fill.

Here’s to us. Here’s to the first day of the rest of our lives.

Happy (late) Valentine’s Day to me. The flowers in my heart are just starting to bloom!

And to my little dog, who taught me what love really feels like: thank you for those sleepy eyes. Thank you for trusting me enough to go back to sleep on my chest. That photo is my new favorite thing.