This uncontrollable ache.

It’s getting to the point where I can’t even watch my parents when they’re together anymore.

My parents are not usually extremely affectionate, but witnessing even their small gestures of affection leave me feeling like someone has thrown a brick into my stomach. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t.

I’m not desperate. I’m not going to sacrifice my reputation, my conscience, or my purity to get attention from a man. But I hurt a lot more than I used to. Do I blame it on him? Partially. He made me feel things at new heights of emotion for me, and consequently I’m left with new lows now that he’s gone.

I went to college hoping it would be a chance for me to start over. For me to be someone who actually had a chance at falling in love instead of screwing up any prospective relationship that may have entered into my life. I was hoping that I could be a new person who didn’t even need a guy, someone who could be just as happy single as I could with someone.

None of that happened. I had high hopes for myself, I really did. I was so happy for the first few months, and I was truly content with being single. Then I met him. I was just as happy then as I was before I met him, if not more so than before. My goal to be single and happy had been achieved, and now that I had become an independently happy person, I wanted to see if I could be happy with someone.

I was. I spent every day smiling and laughing and just… happy! That word starts to lose its meaning, but it’s the only word that comes to mind when I think about the time when he and I were getting to know each other. We’d take long walks, and we’d study together, and we’d sit on my couch and talk between classes every Tuesday afternoon. I finally got comfortable enough to trust him. And it felt good.

Almost instantaneously following that moment of trust, my feelings of happiness were shattered. It was a matter of literal hours after I’d decided that I trusted him, when he dropped a bomb straight into my soul and told me he wasn’t ready to date me. He wasn’t even ready to try. I never even hinted that we could be something more, but apparently he had thought of that possibility, and for whatever reason it scared him. So he held my heart for a matter of hours, just before he let it fall out of his grip and shatter. Again. And this time, I felt more pain than I ever had before.

I’m still reeling from it, in a way, even though it’s been over a month since he told me he couldn’t try. I think I’m only reeling because my hope was built up, I thought that for the first time in my life, I’d have someone to call my own. My dreams for what we could become had just mustered up the courage to emerge from the depths of my soul, but then his words crushed them in a matter of minutes.

I just hate knowing how incredible it feels to be pursued. I almost wish I didn’t know what it felt like. I could compare it to someone with an allergy to chocolate. If they’ve never in their life tasted chocolate, then they have no perception of how much they’re missing by not being able to eat it. But once they’ve tasted it once, they know how amazing it tastes, and they want more, even though it’s not good for them. I’m the same way. Now that I know what it feels like to be held, and to have someone whisper in my ear, and to have someone kiss me on the cheek, I just want more, even though I know it may not be what I need right now.

I feel like I’m slipping. I was fine for a few days, because I knew he was far away, geographically. Now that same knowledge makes me feel incredibly alone. I feel hopeless. I don’t want to be alone forever. At this moment, the knowledge of how very ALONE I really am makes it difficult for me to breathe if I dwell on it for too long.

I don’t know what to do.