I felt tears pricking my eyes. “We’re just talking in circles now,” he said, as he got up from the sofa to leave.

I’d been crying a lot the past week and a half after the first guy I had ever seriously dated got a job offer that he needed — a job offer that, unfortunately for me and the future of our relationship, would mean he would have to move. Somewhere far away from me.

Little did I know that crying a lot, for him and for other reasons, would be a recurring theme in my life for the next six months.

At the age of 24, I had officially had my first breakup. And one of the saddest parts was I had been bracing myself for it since the beginning of our relationship. About two weeks into us first talking, he told me he was applying for jobs out of state. Once he told me, a pit had developed in my stomach because I knew my luck and I knew it could only end one way — with him walking away from me. Or, more specifically, from what we had.

I was no stranger to rejection, and the last time we saw each other sure felt a lot like it. But I couldn’t allow myself to cry in front of him. Because the ending was not mutual. I didn’t want the connection to fade away. He was scared, avoiding eye contact with me, while sitting less than three feet away as I was laying out my argument to give this blossoming thing a chance.

And I don’t blame him for being scared. I knew him well enough to know that he thought ending it at that point was the right thing to do. Because there’s no denying that long distance would’ve been hard. But I want to make this clear: I wasn’t asking him to choose me, pick me, love me. I just wanted him to reassure me that I wasn’t alone in my feelings. I wanted him to admit that he had feelings for me too, that the timing was just off. He didn’t, though.

He gave me nothing to hold on to, which I think was intentional because he was trying to make it easier for me to let go of him, although this is all pure speculation. Little did he know that doing that would only make me ruminate more, because the safety and comfort I felt in his gaze was what I had spent my life thus far searching for.

The silence was palpable, and it was almost more than I could bear. I had fallen for someone before, and I vowed to myself to never do that again. So being the person that I am, he walked out my front door with a plate of his favorite cookies I had baked for him and the coffee mug I gave him as a graduation present.

While we would become friends in the coming months, our last interaction still haunts me. Because I’ve always been the type of person who tries, to my own detriment, and that was one area where he and I truly differed.

So I will have to spend however long it takes to get him fully out of my head while avoiding thinking about what could’ve been, because I spent last summer stuck in that mental asylum of breaking my own heart over and over again. Last fall, I finally clawed my way out of that mindset, but it’s a daily struggle to keep the hole of loneliness he left open in me at bay.

My view on love has, quite frankly, always been slightly convoluted — from spending my early childhood witnessing my parents’ marriage come apart at the seams to having a crush on a boy for years and never having the courage to tell him for fear of being ridiculed. Feelings, for me, have always been somewhat of an inconvenience, better kept in the shadows.

This dating experience has kind of cemented that notion because even though he knew what I wanted, I couldn’t make him want the same thing. And that’s the reality of love.

You can put your best foot forward, with the purest of intentions, and still come out with a new scar.

In my case, my love interest didn’t create a new scar but rather ripped open an age-old one from seeing people who shaped me leave me.

Most days, I honestly want to go into the woods and scream at whatever force thought it would be funny to make a girl wait 24 years to be wanted and then to rip that person away from her after a few brief moments of the purest happiness she had ever known.

Because it wasn’t fair.

But as one of the greatest lyricists of our generation, Taylor Swift, once said, “Love is a ruthless game, unless you play it good and right.” But I hope there comes a day when I won’t be afraid to let someone in when it comes to love.

I hope, one day, it will be enough to be me.

Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree at Emerson College.