Page 166 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

The kind where tears slipped out while commuting home because a song came on shuffle.

The kind where I’d stare at the ceiling at four in the morning, exhausted but unable to sleep because my mind kept playing fantasies of us doing okay again.

The kind where I’d suddenly break down while folding laundry because I remembered he once said he liked me in blue.

It was humiliating how much pain a person could hold for someone who was no longer reaching back. And the worst part about this situationship heartbreak wasn’t even the sadness.

It was the waiting.

The constant, desperate waiting.

Waiting for your phone to light up.

Waiting for them to realize they miss you too.

Waiting for them to come back softer. Kinder. Ready.

You built entire futures inside tiny silences.

Every notification became hope.

Every silence became grief all over again.

And somehow even, after everything, I still loved him.

That was the part nobody talked about enough.

How love didn’t disappear just because someone hurt you. How your heart could understand something was breaking you and still crawl toward it anyway.

But also how cruel silence could be. How someone you loved could hold themselves back from you on purpose—offering distance, withholding warmth, making you sit alone in the punishment of that one mistake that, deep down, felt forgivable.

Still, I kept thinking maybe if I gave him enough time, he’d come back. Maybe he just needed space. Maybe love like ours wouldn’t end this way.

But days kept passing.

And Victor never came around.

Until one evening, I realized I couldn’t keep living suspended between hope and rejection.

The battle between the love I had for him and the self-respect I had for myself became unbearably exhausting.

Not just physically, but soul-deep.

Tiredness and I became one—the kind that came from loving someone with your entire body while slowly realizing they were already letting go of you.

So I went to his apartment building… again, without letting him know.

The evening air felt heavy, humid enough to cling to my skin. Cars moved past me in slow streams of light while I stood outside the entrance, staring at the glass doors like they held answer to my entire life.

My hands trembled as I typed:

I’m outside.

The message sent immediately.

And then I waited.

Every second stretched.