Spill It V

It's a Friday evening and I'm still working because well, I still have work to do before Monday. I'm going to take a mini-break here because I'm feeling overwhelmed.
I finally communicated with person we shall call J today. I sent him a very direct text saying I want to meet with him briefly to share something. He responded, "of course." No date set for said meeting.
I made this move because last night I experienced what I thought was a breakthrough. I ended up in a bookstore after work browsing the self-help/psychology section and found Bethenny Frankel's "A Place of Yes." It's a book I have on reserve at the library, but there's about 30 people ahead of me, so I knew it would be a while before I'd be able to borrow a copy. Anyway, I sat down and read a section on relationships called "Finding Your Truth."
I won't explain how the entire revelation happened, but reading that chapter convinced me that even though this relationship is important and meant a lot to me, it was perhaps just not right because neither of us were the best people we could to be in the relationship. I don't mean that in the sense that we both needed to be perfect, but we both needed to be committed and dedicated to making the relationship better — everyday. I began to feel empowered thinking that yes, I can be better and will be better!
Today, however, I'm feeling much more deflated. My life is still the same: I'm alone. I've been dumped. I feel like a loser. Even if I can look forward and articulate this to the person we shall J, as I plan to do, the damage is done.
In a way, I'm trying to use every decision, every thing I say or do, as a way to exert some power over my life and be assertive. I think that was definitely missing from my relationship — the strong, confident version of myself that somehow got buried. It's comforting to think that part of me is resurfacing, but it won't bring back what I lost in its absence.