text: I was always taken away by the beauty of the woman I loved. Her sheer presence could make me smile, even on days where darkness overshadowed the light. The simplicity of her “Hey!” when she walked through the door of my house had me jumping in excitement like a young child opening presents on Christmas. She was the person I wanted to spend every second of every day with, taking cringeworthy pictures and putting them on Instagram, or recording me when I danced around the room as if I was Jamie Bell in Billy Elliot. Our love was simple - and equal. We first met in college in Sociology. It was the first day of the term and the universe already did us a favor by having the teacher make us sit next together. We were both slightly awkward and although we wanted to start a conversation, it was difficult for us to do so. I finally got the confidence to say the word, hello and in that same sweet way she always does, she looked at me and said “Hey.” It took us twenty minutes to start talking to each other, but after that, we couldn’t stop. It got to so much talking that we eventually started dating. But relationships aren’t easy. To keep a relationship vigorous is one of the hardest things to do as many factors can intercept the relationship and knock it off course: The stress of your job or schoolwork, financial issues, new people that come into our lives, they can all damage a once happy relationship ­- they can all dispossess you of the woman you love. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks. She no longer gave me the long-detailed responses I used to get when I messaged her “How was your day?” It was now just: “fine” or “good”. I was inexperienced with relationships. I was naïve. I didn’t know how to tackle this issue because I didn’t know what the issue was. Was it me? Was I the issue? I went to her house to see if she was in, to see if we could speak about this and overcome it. I didn’t want to lose her, she was the first person that made me feel such warmth, such happiness. I didn’t want that to be stripped away from me. She opened the door and I froze. I hadn’t planned how I was going to come about the issue, I just knew that I wanted to. “What are you doing here?” It wasn’t the heartfelt greeting I wanted but with the way things have been going lately, I wasn’t surprised by the way she greeted me. “I need to talk to you, about us, things are different between us.” “I can’t, I’m busy.” She wasn’t busy - I knew that. I wanted to be wrong, but I knew that she was lying to me. She shut the door before I could reply, I stood there for minutes as I had frozen in time. The same night I decided to message her so that I could try and say what I wanted to. For hours I sat there listening to the same 1975 songs, waiting for a reply from her. I never got one. For the next couple of weeks, I tried to try and speak to her, but she never returned the favor. I went back to her house and knocked on the door like I did the previous weeks. She answered the door and started with excuses pulled from thin air. “Stop with the lies!” I couldn’t take the worrying or the hurt anymore and I told her exactly how I was feeling. I told her about the pain of not seeing her in weeks, the constant worry of upsetting her. It was all too much. For several minutes I poured my heart out to the girl I loved about how I couldn’t cope not seeing her and feeling as if I had hurt or upset her in some way. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and on her cheek and said the most painful sentence I’ve ever had to hear. “I think this is the end for us.” She was right. We no longer shared the same amount of excitement about our relationship and it was clear that we needed to move on, and after the longest and most soul-wrenching hug of my life, I walked out of her house and said goodbye to her for the last time.