This Summer Actually Hurt Like A Motherfucker

One day you’re smiling, watching his personal Snapchats which he only sends to you. And then the next day, it’s reloading the page to see if he’s online. You consistently bother yourself with the reminder that he’s online, he’s awake, he’s breathing, he’s a person, he exists… and that you’re all of a sudden not in the loop anymore.

You never really expect the day will come when you get broken up with. It starts out similar to others and you wake up tired and groggy, as you do every Sunday. Except this time, you’re in a foreign country because you’re studying abroad.

You send good morning texts, however his morning is your late afternoon. Long distance is hard, but it’s been 10 months of going to different schools 3.5 hours away and this is only a six-week separation. The day passes with casual conversation, each in your own world, but as much as you can share with each other.

And then you see a comment he made on another girl’s Instagram. You don’t want to be “crazy,” but you trust him enough to ask for an answer. He blows up. He suggests you take a few days from each other; But as soon as you respond, there is no answer. For the next full day, he’s absent. Until after numerous texts and calls, and a final, “I can’t enjoy my first time outside of the country,” grabs his attention.

Here it is.

“I’m with my thoughts,” he says.

He calls you. And unfolds a two-month painful back and forth decision. He wants to invest himself in his own school. He says he feels like he was two different people caught between visiting you and establishing himself at school. He says he’s putting his feelings on the side to do the “right,” thing. We are over.

You hang up and you call him again the next day to present your side of an argument that doesn’t exist. He has made his decision, but he still wants to keep you in his life. You can’t say no. You feed into any way that you will still be with him, even if you’re not “his.” The worst part is you can’t hate him. But you can’t eat. Your body rejects health. Your body rejects any type of healing. You convince yourself this is going to be a scar left unhealed. You can hold onto this pain while you love him in whatever form he can take from you.

You text that night. You ask if the future still exists.

He explains that it does after college and reminds you that his father told him, “She is a woman you build a house with.” It makes you feel somewhat better, but there are still tears you choke back. He always kept his promises and he says that this one is another one of his.

However too much happens in a week, a month, a year for you to know where you will stand then.

Till then- you will try to keep in touch. You will try to get over him, but only enough where you can stop the agony of stomach aching cries at night. You will keep him in your heart, with the alarm date set. You will have to distract yourself for a few years, while loving him from afar but also in a friendship. You promise yourself you can and will wait because this is worth the gamble.

You hope he does the same too. I hope he decides sooner.