I'm 18, almost 19. He's 25. According to every statistic I should have been the one who wasn't ready and needed to find myself.

I guess I should have seen it coming. I could tell he was getting distant. We're both really hard to love. But that doesn't mean I wasn't up to the challenge of loving him with all I am. He showed me how I deserved to be treated. That I deserved love and respect. He was one of four people on this Earth that I would lay down my life for.

I was told by someone very wise and dear to me not to let someone walk away without your true feelings expressed. So I told him. I had to constantly catch myself from saying it to risk saying it at the wrong time. When we would get off the phone, I'd bite my tongue because it was there. The three words to confess everything. I've never cried over the loss of man because I'm an independent woman and I do not need a man, but he made me realize my biggest dreams to have a family and he's who I wanted to do that with. But now he's gone. And he said when I get back to the Midwest, when I go to pick up my things, he doesn't want it to be a real quick grab my things and go. He said he doesn't want me to hate him, that it's nothing I did. He just rushed into something he wasn't sure he was ready for. But I could never hate him. He was and is a great man.

I guess I'll go back to sleep now and in a few hours wake up again to my new reality.