The last time I watched her walk away wasn’t as hard as the first. I’d been with her for a year and watched the all time lows getting lower. Saying it was all bad would be disingenuous. Saying it was all good, would be disingenuous and border on being one of the saccharine jilted lovers we’ve all seen wallowing online. Neither is true, but getting the whole truth is rarely something we can see from outside a relationship.

We’d walked into each other’s lives from great distances and the longer we were together the more that distance pulled out the seams. We’d always try and meet somewhere in the middle, but many times the efforts were too great and we fell right back into the old familiar stinging habits.

I’ve been single for going on two years, which for some, may not seem like a lot, but for others is a lifetime. It’s more about the feeling of being single this time. There’s an inevitability to it as if it’s my burden to bear. I’ve picked up the pieces one too many times and this time it barely seems worth it.

It’s a bad sign when you still think of the softness of her hand and the way she’d look at you. But you know you don’t really want her back. A part of me wants her to take me with her and the other rips his hand free.

It’s a very strange juxtaposition, in that I know I’m lying to myself, but also only have myself to blame. There are moments at night when I’d give up everything to have her back, but then I wake only to dismiss the notion. The echoes have faded into the distance and each moment without her purges that old familiar sting.

But somehow days or weeks later it creeps back in. I’ll be doing fine and in unexpected moments I’ll remember her tan line-less face forming into an almost imperceptible smile. Then remembering how it felt to have that directed at me. The feeling of fullness that had vacated me and the breaking apart that’s replaced it.

I will weather the storm—there’s no doubt there. The real question I’m searching for is why? Why weather the same thing again and again? Why put the same old fears forward and then wish it all away? Why watch the life I wanted drain of color before my eyes into the yearning? The yearning for home and the way in which it can completely consume someone. I tell myself I would for you, but really, was it all worth it?