He needed space, he said. This time, though, he didn’t mean the type of space where he left the house after one of their ridiculous arguments and headed to the pub to fill his belly and clear his mind. The space that he needed at this point could only be obtained with a new address. She agreed, thinking that’s what would cure all of their problems. Needless to say, she was wrong.

She helped him moved across town into a one bedroom apartment on the edge of the ghetto. Once the last of his effects were placed in his new home, she kissed him and said goodbye, then drove off, giving herself a headache from the pressure of crying so damn hard. What the hell are we doing? she thought to herself as she drove back home to an empty apartment.

For the next few weeks, she temporarily avoided her obsessive thoughts by working long hours to the point where she exhaustedly arrived home only to pass out in front of the television within minutes. But sleep didn’t offer any escape from her helpless and sickened thoughts. The things that she was trying to avoid while awake haunted her mind as she slept, causing her to wake in tears several times during the night when she realized that he really was no longer there.

Every time she heard the clink of the gate outside of her apartment, she would watch out the window, hoping it was him coming back to say that he somehow suddenly loved her again. She was naïve, but a broken heart makes you think in crazy ways. Pizza delivery guys, the mailman and her neighbors all disappointed her as they passed by, making her come to terms with the fact that he no longer did love her and that she needed to begin really dealing with it instead of ignoring it.

She knew that you can’t force someone to have feelings for you, force someone to be in love with you, no matter if they had been at one time or not. She had been on the other side of that many times in her life with guys who she wanted to “just be friends” with; guys who she knew would have given anything to just be with her but that she just couldn’t make herself love.

Regardless of the fact that she was still completely in love with him and wanted more than anything to have another chance at making a life with him, she finally let him go, and she began to figure out what to do with the extra space that she now had in her life.