*edgy aesthetic quote*

I am still not over my ex and I haven't seen him since April. 4 months. 8 months ago he dumped me in a corner of the university garden overlooking the lake. Same place we had walked around on our "second date". First, if you don't consider me inviting everyone I met to a gig so I wasn't by myself, and he was the only one to take up the invitation.

That first night I wasn't even thinking about him as a prospect. I was trying to catch the eye of an overly elusive drummer from one of the bands that were playing. He would be the second person that I slept with trying to get over him in a few months' time, but we're not there yet. I still didn't know who this guy that I invited was. I had met him at an orientation mixer for postgrads in the English department and he just so happened to be walking in the same direction when we left the mixer and I just so happened to be trying to round up people to come to the gig.

A few months later, before I knew he was thinking about ending things, he mentioned how he thought I was giving him mixed signals, but when I went home with him he thought it was all intentional on my part. It wasn't.

I fell into something suddenly. He didn't want a "relationship", I didn't want to immediately get into something in a new country anyway. FOMO, on my part. Avoidant attachment, on his. But in time, lines were blurred. It didn't feel like just friends with benefits. He would pull my feet into his lap when we were sitting on the couch. He would tell me I was pretty in the middle of sex, looking at me like something else. He would hold me through my toothache (apparently it was slowly dying after a bad filling) and would still want to be together when I didn't want to have sex. I know. Bare minimum. But it felt different.

And then one day he looked at me like he was finding the answer to something. And maybe he didn't like the answer. Maybe I misread the question. But a month after that, after I had thought he was safe to care for, safe to fall in love with, we were sitting on a bench, I was giving him vegan cheese for his birthday because that was the thing he missed most since going vegan, blue cheese, and he said. "That makes this so much harder."