I'm finally moving out of our apartment next week. It's super bittersweet because this was supposed to be our home (we moved into a nice, new, big-ish place just five months ago), but I've gone and muffed all of that up. I think detaching myself from the physical space will be very good for me, though. She's sad about me leaving, but relieved at the same time. She talked about how she didn't think I would find a place this quickly and I think it really caught her off-guard. (She gave me the 60-day notice to vacate only two weeks ago.)

I can't dwell on how positive that sounds, though. Neither of us can heal if I don't give her the space that she asked for. It does give me some hope for the future, though. There's absolutely a part of her that doesn't want to let go, and I think we can address that when the healing is in more than its infancy. I just committed to filling out the remaining 11 months of the lease of the person I'm replacing in the new place, so if there's a chance for Aenne and I to get back together, I'll make sure that we don't rush into moving back in with one another. Maybe an opportunity to date each other without being housemates will be healthy.

We started out in a long-distance relationship and I made the cross-country move after only five months. While none of that has any impact on the mistakes I made by lying to her, it was definitely a big influence on how tough the relationship was last spring when we had our first rocky patch. But we got through that. I am confident that we can get through this too... it just requires a different process.