Page 165 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

That was it.

Simple.

Final in a way that didn’t sound final—but felt like it was.

Something in my chest cracked: hurt and annoyance.

But I just nodded, even if it didn’t feel like an agreement.

“Okay,” I said, though my voice barely held.

I stayed there for a second longer than I should have. Waiting. For something. For him to soften. To reach out. To say, “Wait. I love you still. Let’s work it out.”

He didn’t.

So I stood up.

Slowly.

Like if I moved too fast, it would make it real.

“I’ll… just… go…” I said.

He didn’t stop me. He didn’t say anything at all.

And somehow, that hurt more than if he had.

And when I found myself outside of his apartment building, the sinking feeling started to seep deep within my chest.

I started walking, but I didn’t know where I was going.

My vision blurred halfway down the street, my limbs numb, my sweat cold.

And then the tears came, because I kept replaying it in my mind: his face, his voice, the distance in the space between us, and the way he didn’t try to stop me from leaving.

For the first time since it all began, it didn’t feel like something we could fix.

It felt like something I had already lost.

And I was just now catching up to it.

The next week became something I survived hour by hour.

Not day by day. Not morning to night. But hour by hour.

Because grief didn’t arrive all at once. It came in waves so random and cruel that I never learned how to prepare for them.

Sometimes I’d be brushing my teeth, and suddenly I’d remember the way Victor used to stand behind me at the sink, half-asleep, one hand resting on my waist like I belonged to him.

And just like that, my chest would cave in again.

Sometimes I’d hear a laugh in public that sounded almost like his, and my entire body would react before my mind could catch up.

Sometimes I’d wake up forgetting for three full seconds that we had fallen apart. And those were always the worst moments. Because for three seconds, I believed I still had him.

Then reality returned all over again. And God, it was unbearable.

I cried every day.