Three years is over.

God, I was young. He was there when I turned 21, brought me to Kitty Hoynes for my first drink and I remember not knowing what to order, despite having drunk myself under tables every weekend since I’d turned 18. He invited all of his friends – I didn’t have many, and I’m sure my best two were at the apartment fighting over (and due to) cheap whiskey. His friends bought me drinks all night. I got sloshed on 7&7s and walked home barefoot through the streets of Syracuse.

I keep doing that… calling it home. It was our home. I might have technically lived off the Syracuse campus in an apartment that I sometimes paid rent for, but in my heart I lived in Nettleton with him. I moved in even before we were together – maybe even while I was still dating his friend – and never really left. I think I left a part of me behind in that place… actually, I think we left a part of us behind.

It was a dinky little place that’s now probably full of black mold and misery, but it was there that I got to know him and grew to love him. Though there are so many things that hold the memories (so many things I never realized held the memories), the apartment at Nettleton will forever remain in the middle of it all. That first night at Nettleton, before I knew what it was all going to amount to, an hour after he dropped me back off at my real apartment and then messaged me asking if I would come back over, and I showed up in sweatpants and we spent the night laughing and yes, sleeping together… that night is sealed in my memory and it sometimes feels like it will never leave.

But I always left.

He did leave once… or rather made me leave once after spending two hours in a bathtub figuring out how to get me to leave. I spent two weeks on Westcott in yet another apartment I paid rent for with one of my best friends and a stompy psycho named Jane. For two weeks I slept in a brand-new bed that my parents bought me for my 21^st birthday and hadn’t used before… or since. And two weeks later he came to get me and brought me back home to Nettleton.

And then we left Nettleton for another dinky place, away from downtown. He needed a change of scenery. I needed to be with him, and by proxy agreed that a change of scenery would be nice. The place was worse than anything I’ve ever lived in, and there were a lot of tears over crooked floorboards and bats and noises and spiders. I was uncomfortable there.

And so I left. Not because I hated it there – I would have lived anywhere that he was, as long as it meant I was with him – but I went back to live with my parents and get my life back in order. I might have lost a little of my mind when I went home, and I know we lost a lot of our love when I left too. The day I went, I made him promise me that it wouldn’t be over and that we would be fine. He promised and I promised and I think we both meant it. Sometimes I still think I meant it. God knows I certainly wanted to mean it.

It’s never that easy though. We made a lot of promises to each other over the three years, and I’d like to think that we kept a lot of them. It was hard though, being away from him. Every time I’d think everything was going great, something would come along and uproot me. I let him go so many times since I’ve lived at home, and so many times he’s been there to pick me back up.

But I kept falling down. I thought the last time was the hardest though. I swore up and down it was for good – swore we’d tried every which way to make it work – and also swore that we’d remain friends. We carried on talking after breaking up, no matter how awkward and difficult it was. Then we ended up in Washington DC for Mets game. He had booked separate beds at the hotel in DC and we slept comfortably in our separate beds. We didn’t hold hands, we didn’t start making out during the game like at new Yankee Stadium, we saw one of the greatest bands ever and took a beautiful three-hour walk through the parks. It was the best trip of my life.

And we got back into Syracuse late on Labor Day… too late for me to drive back home. And we shared his bed and that was that. And I swore up and down that we were back together for good. We hid the “relationship” for quite a while, until Halloween. I was emotional because he was hooking up with a scaly monstrosity, and he was emotional because he didn’t want to be with her. We swore we would make it work.

We tried.

Sometimes trying just gets to be too much. The relationship wasn’t work at Nettleton – it just was. Having to actively make love be present in a relationship is so draining. And after three years, it had to be over.

I wish it didn’t. I wish with every ounce of love I have left in me that it didn’t have to be over. But it got to the point that I hurt when he’s here, and I hurt when he’s not here. And I chose to hurt by myself.

I hope he knows how much love I have for him – how much love I’ve always had for him, since that first night in Nettleton. And I hope he understands that I’m still not sure if the choice I made was the right choice, and I hope he forgives me if I break down the next time I see him… if I see him. I hope he knows that I ache every second of the day because I’m not able to hear his voice, and I hope he knows that I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused him over the past three years, because pain was not my intention. I hope he’s reading this and it doesn’t make him hurt and I hope he doesn’t find every word to be yet another of my dramatizations. And I hope that he looks back on our three years together and remembers all of the wonderful times exactly as I do.

And I hope one day that I’m able to get over him.