On heartbreak, healing, and learning to choose myself.
Tiff Talks
Sep 12
Some albums find you at the right time.
Westside Whimsy found me four months after I thought I had completely fallen apart.
Four months ago, I had one of the most difficult mental health crises of my life. I ended up hospitalized, and even though time has passed since then, it doesn't feel like something that happened a long time ago. It's still fresh. It's still real. I'm still figuring out what it changed in me.
Maybe that's why music has always meant so much to me. The last time an album met me in the middle of a major transition was Chilombo, in 2020. I was preparing to lose my grandmother, the person I was closest to in the world. That album became part of the way I processed her death.
Shortly after, I met him.
And then came another kind of grief.
I loved him deeply. Probably more deeply than I knew how to explain at the time. I thought what we had was rare. I thought it was a soulmate kind of connection—the kind that could survive anything because surely something that felt that unique had to mean something.
But one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn is that loving someone does not mean they will love you back in the way you need to be loved. You cannot love someone hard enough to make them choose you.
The heartbreak that followed wasn't just heartbreak. It changed me.
There were things that happened within that relationship that brought out insecurities I didn't even know I had. It affected the way I saw myself and my body. It broke down parts of me that I had spent years building. Eventually, the pain became so consuming that I had a mental health crisis and had to be hospitalized.
For years, I prayed for men like him not to leave me.
I prayed for the attachment to stay.
I prayed for the person I thought was my soulmate to choose me.
And somewhere along the way, my prayer changed.
Now I pray that kind of attachment never finds me again.
Because my definition of a soulmate has changed.
I used to think a soulmate was defined by the uniqueness of the connection. Someone you could sit quietly beside and still feel completely understood. Someone whose presence felt different from everyone else's. Someone who could make you feel like, How could I ever find this again?
I still believe in that kind of connection.
But now I want all of that without having to destroy myself to keep it.
The quiet.
The intimacy.
The feeling of being known.
The deep, almost inexplicable bond.But without losing pieces of myself trying to hold onto someone else.
Maybe that's why Westside Whimsy feels so personal to me.
I am a whimsical girl. My femininity has always existed somewhere between Black girl magic, softness, romance, imagination, and a little bit of delusion. I am a lover girl. I believe in grand feelings and tiny moments. I believe in music that makes you feel like the main character and in the possibility that life can still surprise you with something beautiful.
I believe in love.
I just don't believe love should require me to abandon myself.
And then, four days before the album came out, I started talking to him again.
Not because I necessarily wanted to get back together. I think I just missed him. I think part of me wanted resolution for something that had been left unresolved for a very long time. And honestly, I felt hopeful. That surprised me.
Because I know myself. I know how easily hope can turn into fantasy when you are a lover girl. I know how quickly missing someone can make you romanticize what hurt you.
Then Westside Whimsy came out.
When I listened to the first half of the album, I kept thinking: Girl, you have come way too far to go stupid again.
Not because I don't love him. Not because what we had wasn't real. Not because I suddenly believe I never cared.
But because I finally understand that caring about someone and choosing yourself are not mutually exclusive.
I've spent the last four months confronting things I used to avoid. I'm addressing what happened to me. I'm making real changes. I'm being more mindful. I'm trying to understand my patterns instead of repeating them. I'm doing the uncomfortable work of becoming someone who doesn't confuse suffering with love.
And I'm learning that healing doesn't mean you never miss the person who hurt you. Healing doesn't mean you suddenly stop remembering the beautiful parts. Healing doesn't mean everything becomes rainbows and sunshine.
Healing is realizing that you can miss someone and still keep moving forward.
You can love someone and still choose yourself.
You can acknowledge that the connection was real without pretending the pain wasn't real too.
I've cried so much these last few years. I've cried through grief, heartbreak, confusion, anger, disappointment, loneliness, and the exhausting process of trying to put myself back together.
So I was almost surprised that I didn't cry until the last song.
The last few songs felt like a sigh.
A release.
Like my body finally understood something my mind had been trying to tell me for years:
It's going to be okay.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
There are good men in the world.
There is love that doesn't require you to abandon yourself.
There is a life after heartbreak.
But the most important realization was that I wasn't hopeful because I was looking at the men anymore.
I was hopeful because I was finally looking at myself.
That is the difference.
For so long, my hope was attached to someone else. I hoped he would come back. I hoped he would understand. I hoped he would change. I hoped he would finally love me the way I loved him. I hoped that if I explained myself enough, loved enough, waited enough, maybe the ending would be different.
Now my hope belongs to me.
I'm learning that healing isn't linear.
Some days I feel incredibly strong. Some days I miss him. Some days I understand exactly why I had to let go, and other days I remember the beautiful parts and wonder what might have been.
Both things can be true.
I can miss someone and still know I shouldn't go back. I can love someone and still choose myself. I can have a bad day without deciding that all of my progress was fake.
Sometimes healing is simply continuing.
Sometimes it's choosing not to send the text.
Sometimes it's admitting that you still miss someone and deciding that missing them doesn't mean you need to go back.
Sometimes it's listening to an album and realizing that the version of you who once begged someone to stay is becoming the woman who knows she will survive if they leave.
That's what Westside Whimsy gave me.
It felt like a love letter to the whimsical girls, the soft girls, the lover girls—the women who love deeply and have been broken deeply because of it.
The girls who romanticize.
The girls who still believe in grand love even after heartbreak.
The girls who are still soft after life gave them every reason not to be.
But more than anything, it felt like a reminder that I don't have to become less of a lover girl to protect myself.
I can still believe in soulmates. I can still believe in romance. I can still believe in magic.
I can still be soft. I just have to believe in myself, too.
Maybe my morning isn't about finding another man.
Maybe it isn't about finding my soulmate.
Maybe, for the first time, it's about finding my way back to myself.
I thought I needed someone else to give me closure.
I was wrong.
Maybe closure is realizing that I can love what something meant to me and still leave it in the past. Maybe closure is understanding that the connection was real and the pain was real, too.
Maybe closure is no longer needing someone who hurt you to be the person who heals you.
And maybe the most whimsical thing I can do now is believe in a future I cannot see yet.
Not because I know another man is coming. Not because I know everything will work out perfectly. Not because I know exactly what healing is going to look like.
But because I finally believe in me.
Four months ago, I was trying to survive.
Today, I'm still healing.
But I'm doing it differently this time.
I'm confronting things.
I'm addressing them.
I'm making changes.
I'm learning myself.
I'm choosing myself, even when choosing myself doesn't feel as romantic as choosing someone else.
And maybe that's the most whimsical thing of all: believing that the girl who once thought her happiness depended on being chosen by someone else can become the woman who chooses herself.
Maybe that's what Westside Whimsy found in me.
Not a girl who stopped believing in love.
A girl who finally learned that she deserves to be part of the love story, too.
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