I went out on my walk reluctant and a little shy. It was right after gym, I had moved my gym classes to 4 pm from six pm simply because I felt like six pm made me much lazier and because of it I’d gone by nearly two months without hitting the gym at all. Today, I finished around 5:30 pm, and as I walked back home, I thought of going for a longer walk. he sky was tempting, and being who I am, I couldn’t resist chasing the hint of sunset colors until the horizon.

However, my subconscious disagreed throughout. She kept screaming, “You just returned from the gym; you look hideous! Why are you going out, and through the marine drive for a walk? You’re nuts.”

And I almost agreed and turned back, until I saw the sky in its full glory—the cotton candy skies painted in hues of red and blue. It was perfect. And I no longer cared about the way I looked.

Then, a stranger asked me to help him with his baby carrier. He was holding the cutest bundle of joy and desperately needed someone to assist him in securing the belt from behind. And I happened to pass by. Now, this walk had more meaning than just me wandering wherever the sunset would take me.

And that means, Subconscious 0 and Ana 1. I had fun.

“I can’t spend the rest of my life explaining myself to you, hoping that you’ll understand why I am the way I am.”

This thought was the singular force that prompted me to end the longest relationship I’d ever been in. After years of trying, I came to realize just how different we were, and how we found ourselves in such different places in life that we truly weren’t seeing eye to eye.

We began our journey as a couple, envisioning a shared future together. However, as we embarked on that journey, even though we walked the same path, we were heading towards different destinations.

He had assumed I would change in a certain way, and I had hoped he would remain the same. Our journey together did help me grow, but not to the extent he had expected.

I yearned to have more fun, dance a little more, wake up with hangovers, and spend my nights in laughter with friends. When we first met, I was just a 23-year-old girl, and by the time we reached our inevitable end, three years had passed. It felt like the prime years of my life had been spent.

He was pushing me to become more than I was willing to be. While he wasn’t wrong to demand more from me, the fact was that I needed a little more time. I wasn’t finished with having fun, and I wasn’t ready to miss out on my life. His pressure to solidify our commitment made me run away and engage in things I otherwise never would have.

Even though he loved me more than I could ever imagine anyone loving me, he couldn’t truly understand me. Every step I took with him felt like a step towards a confined love. In the end, it became clear that he wasn’t the the one for me.

And that’s when I knew that I couldn’t spend my life explaining myself to someone, hoping they would understand.

And this realization still holds true today.

Even when you know they won’t come through for you, the heart still hopes a little because it still loves and can’t fathom the reality that they no longer do. So every repetitive disappointment pushes you back to the truth that you already know, yet the heart continues to deny the truth, for it loves so much and wishes he did too.

Detoxing from someone is hard—the detachment and getting used to a reality without them—and mostly walking away from the person you love more than yourself. But it’s a lesson I will forever etch in my heart.

I had loved him when I believed I didn’t have the ability to. He showed me I was capable of loving someone, and that only shows me the way forward.

I read somewhere, “Imagine just how much you could love the right person if you loved the wrong person this much.” Although I disagree, it gives me hope that one day I won’t be here. One day I will find new love again and feel new things, unimaginable things. But it just sucks right now. My heart is in pieces. It’s craving him like it craves a drug. It needs his love, like it needs oxygen pumped to its veins. Yet, he doesn’t care. He’d leave my heart out to die, and that truth hurts.

Najwa Zebian once said, “Do you really need the person who hurt you to tell you, ‘I hurt you, and I’m sorry, and I feel awful that I did it’? It’s beautiful to get it, but do you need it? Do you not know how painful the pain was when you experienced it? Do you need them to tell you how painful it was and give you permission to feel it? You don’t need it, you want it because you believe your relief is going to come when they acknowledge what they put you through.”

And she said, “Even if they do, you think it’s going to take the pain away, but it doesn’t. Because you still have to heal from that pain.”

Being starved out of love kind of kills something in you, and even if they say the person who hurt you can’t fix you, you still feel like the only person who can bring even the slightest amount of relief is just that person. So you constantly turn to them, only for them to do what they always do—leave you in the dark. And then darkness becomes your home for a while before you can open your eyes to the light.