Perhaps it’s a sign of something more, something unseen, something I don’t know about myself. I’d certainly hope not, the very thought seems not only unfortunate, but sad. Really sad. If I’m somehow behind this, doing something unknowingly to cause this – again and again – I only wish I knew what it was so I could change.

Not that I’m big on changing for the sake of change, or for others. I am who I am, and – for the most part – I’m pretty happy with it. But this, this keeps happening. People keep leaving, people I like and I lust and I could love, they keep leaving. Not just leaving, but leaving me. With no explanation.

Just one day, they were there; the next, they vanish. As if what came before didn’t really happen, that we weren’t really dating, that all those times we talked about the future – be it a trip in months to come or even a dinner one night next week – never happened.

It makes me think I’m crazy – how do people know if they’re crazy? What if I just made it all up in my head, altered my pictures of us together but blocked that out, and altered my journal to show that they were in my life when really it was just me, wishing and hoping and making myself believe it? Deep down, I know that’s not the case – I know it did happen, they did exist, we did exist – but it’s almost easier to think that perhaps I’m going crazy instead of the fact that these people who I once so highly respected, once had the ability to make me feel giddy and excited and all nervous in my stomach by something as little as an email, can value me, value us, so little that they can leave it without so much as an explanation. How could it mean something if they, again and again, leave?

Anytime you’re faced with a hard decision – and I’m not talking about Coors Light vs. Miller Lite here, these decisions are the life changing ones, the ‘should I stay or should I go’ type of decisions – there’s the easy way out and the right way. Very, very rarely the two are one and the same, and when faced with that choice, the only decision is to step up to the proverbial plate and do it the right way. Because, though you think you may be making it easier on everyone, (your excuse for really just making it easier on you and avoiding the harsh reality of life and emotion), what you’re really doing is making the other person wonder if they’re losing their mind, wonder if the relationship existed at all, wonder what was wrong with them that they didn’t even warrant a real goodbye.

Relationships aren’t easy. They bend you and stretch you and sometimes subtly break down who you are. Not all at once, of course, but little by little, your very self is being torn – just a small rip at first, just a little one here or there. But after a while, after a few relationships and a few broken hearts and a few hurts and a few tears, all of those little rips eventually break you.

Please. Remember that what to you seems like a small, meaningless rip could actually be the tear that rips someone else apart.