As I drove down the empty highway, the sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm glow that hardly eased the ache in my chest. Your face, fading on the edges of my memory, felt vivid and clear — a haunting reflection of what once was. None of us thought it would come to this; the end arrived with a quiet intensity that felt like a punch to the gut.

We were young and impulsive, riding the waves of life with reckless abandon, believing that love could conquer all. But people are people, prone to change, to grow apart despite the connections we forged. And now, with each passing mile, I felt the weight of your absence press down on me like a heavy shroud.

The music playing from the radio turned bittersweet, evoking the kind of sorrowful nostalgia you see in the closing scenes of a tragic movie. I didn’t want this ending; it was not the conclusion I had hoped for. Tragedy lingered in the air, and it pulled me down, making it hard to think of a future without you by my side.

What was I now? In this life where you had been my anchor, I realized I was adrift, unable to breathe in a world that felt foreign without your familiar presence. We both knew breaking up wasn’t easy; there were no clean breaks, only detours through heartache and confusion. In my mind, you were still the familiar contours I could trace like the back of my hand, and yet I was standing here, struggling to breathe, desperately trying to find a way forward — but having to do so alone.

I never wanted it to end like this. It hurt to see you in pain, and I’d swerved through every obstacle in hopes we could navigate our way back to each other. Yet sometimes, despite our best efforts, the road ahead forks in ways we never see coming. Nothing we said could revitalize the spark that had gone dim, and we were left to pick up the pieces in the wake of our collapse.

At 2 AM, the world outside was quiet, but my mind was a storm of thoughts, feeling just as desolate as if I had lost a dear friend. I imagined you somewhere, perhaps feeling the weight of this distance as heavily as I did, and I hoped you understood — this was not easy for me.

As the night stretched on, I realized I had to confront this heartache, to breathe without you, even if every intake of air felt like nails against my lungs. I repeated this mantra, clinging to the hope that with time, the pain would dull and I would find my way back to happiness. But all I could whisper into the darkness was a series of apologies for what we had lost and for the future we would never share. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.