Love, briefly

situationships & false hope

*For privacy, the names in this piece have been altered*

In late April, my tumultuous relationship came to an end. We had been unraveling for months, but he was all I had known – from high school to my first year of college. We had been each other’s first kiss, first I love you, first gut-wrenching goodbye.

I grieved us before we were even over–the way we used to laugh between kisses, the easy certainty of imagining a future together, the little details, like which records we’d play each night as we cooked dinner. Somewhere along the way, the silences we didn’t know how to fill became longer and the distance between us became something we could no longer ignore. We had become dull and colorless, saying I’m sorry more than I love you. We didn’t know how to be us anymore, and neither of us saw that changing. The version I mourned of us was already gone.

When we broke up, I joined my roommate on the dating apps, swiping half-heartedly, like I was searching for something I didn’t believe I could actually find. And then, within a week, there was Ben. He was tall, smart, and had an infectious laugh that made me smile instantaneously. He went to school an hour away. We both cursed our bad timing, meeting just before finals.

We’ll go out in August, he said.

Sounds like a plan, I replied.

Summer unfolded through texts and late-night calls where he’d talk about the patterns in how I laughed. I grew accustomed to the sound of his voice in the dark, the warmth of it through the phone. He called me beautiful and told me that he missed me on his long workdays. We talked about our plans to visit each other at school and drafted a list of things we’d do together: walks on the beach, movie marathons, making each other playlists, baking. I let myself believe in the softness of it, the possibility that it could be this easy.

Then one night in June, he told me he couldn’t tell the vibe between us. I thought it had been obvious. Glaring, even. He said it would be easier to know in person. I agreed, but something had already shifted. A weight settled between us, and I could feel it pressing down, tightening the space where possibility once lived.

Restlessly, that night I drafted a text message, suggesting the idea of meeting in the middle of our two states over the summer. Just for a day, just to see. I sent it, tucked my phone away, and tried to let the night carry me elsewhere. But I already knew.

The next morning, I woke to silence.

Anxiety stirred in my stomach until I felt my phone vibrate. His reply was polite, careful. A rejection wrapped with a bow. That’s sweet of you to suggest. I don’t think meeting is the best idea, seeing as I’m not sure about a relationship.

Unbeknownst to him, without trying, he had made me believe–just for a moment–that love was still possible for me.

He had spoken about his reservations before, and each time, I reassured him, asking if there was anything I could do. Just keep being you, he’d say. So I tried. Really, really hard to be effortless—to be cool and unbothered—all while knowing at any moment he could drift away.

Despite my efforts and the countless journal entries I’d written attempting to decode him, I remained stuck. I silently willed him to change his mind, to wake up one morning with the sudden certainty that it was me he wanted. Deep down, I knew it was ultimately doomed. I often found myself confused by how he felt, but I was too nervous to ask–too scared to hear the truth, the one I knew was inevitable.

I journaled my relationship fears, ones he unknowingly validated in quiet, indifferent ways. I chose to live in momentary, blissful ignorance, convinced it was better than certainty. In actuality, I was spiraling, tangled in the suffocating weight of my own anxieties.

I was terrified of becoming mundane, of clinging too tightly, of not being interesting enough. As the days stretched on and our conversations became routine, I feared the growing inevitability that he would see the cracks I tried so hard to hide.

A few months later, he posted his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. She went to school three hours away. So it wasn’t timing. It wasn’t distance. It wasn’t the concept of a relationship. It was just me.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something more elusive—a feeling he never found in me, an absence he couldn’t name but still knew was there. For months, I searched for the answer, combing through messages, replaying conversations, trying to pinpoint the moment I had mistaken a fleeting thing for something meant to stay.

probably the best movie about situationships

But in the end, it was never really about him.

It was about what he represented—the fragile proof that love could still exist after I had convinced myself it never would again. That I could still feel something, still want something, still believe in something beyond the hollow space my first heartbreak had left behind.

Losing him was about more than just about losing him–a guy who, in all reality, I didn’t know very well. It was about losing the version of myself that, for a fleeting moment, had believed I was capable of being loved again. When he left, it felt as though the hope I had been clinging to slipped through my fingers before I even knew I was holding it.

In the end, I realized it wasn’t about finding the love I thought I had lost—it was about reclaiming the belief that I was worthy of it in the first place. That’s what made letting go so difficult: it wasn’t just him I was losing, but the fragile hope that had once convinced me love was still possible, even after everything.

And maybe love doesn’t always stay. Maybe it arrives in fleeting glimpses, in almosts and not-quites, in people who are meant to pass through, but never remain. I learned, slowly, that love doesn’t always stay. But in its absence, something else takes root—the quiet, steady belief that love is still out there, that it can return, that it will.

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