I start to believe that he will come to the door and tell me that he didn’t mean it when he told me he didn’t love me anymore—that he was just scared and confused when he said those five words. All I could do at that moment was watch him go down the stairs with tears in my eyes, as he slowly closed the door and locked it behind him.

I made my way upstairs to my room and crawled into bed—knowing that those words he said would continue to repeat over and over in my mind for the rest of my life. But maybe he has come to tell me he didn’t mean it—that he didn’t mean to hurt me. Maybe he has come back to tell me that he still loves me—that he won’t leave me broken and devastated again, trying to crawl out of the hole that I seem to have fallen into after he left.

So I listen and wait for the knock at the door, but it doesn’t come. And once again, I am brought back to reality and I am only left with all of the questions I have been asking myself since that night.

I still wonder how he could have said those words in the first place. How he could have—with just five words—taken all of our years together and turned them into nothing but a memory. It must have been something he had thought about for a while—because someone doesn’t just suddenly say that, do they?

When I look back, there may have been more signs than I thought and maybe I just didn’t want to see them. Perhaps there were small changes in his behavior I overlooked.

I have always been an overthinker, and because of this, I would try my best to blow it off and chalk it up to just that—overthinking. After all, he always pointed this out to me—that I think too much. But that night, there was nothing left to question or wonder about. Because this time, he said the words out loud, and this time, I listened. I had no other choice.

I know that many of my questions will never be answered and that the more energy I spend trying to figure out how he could do this to me—to us—is energy that I could use to heal and become whole again.

So, for now, I snap back into reality and hope that someday when I hear a car door slam on the night, I won’t wonder if it’s him. Because by then, I will have realized he isn’t coming back—that it is just another noise in the night.