End of an Era: Q

Well, if you haven't heard already... me and Q have split up. i guess i haven't felt like writing about it, even though it'd been building up towards this ending for quite some time. Today i helped her move into her new apartment out by the art district. 

Then i came home and took my bike into the bike shed, where the guy who lives there asked me what summer plans were for me, my bro, and gf. i mentioned that Q wouldn't be around since she just moved away and we'd broken up. 

"That's not acceptable! You shouldn't break up! You two need to get married!"

"Well, there's nothing to be done. We already broke up. And she got a new apartment. She moved."

"That's not acceptable!"

In the most basic mandarin, i did try to explain my relationship to the bike shed guy.

1. We argued quite a bit.

2. Q definitely wanted to get married, but i believe that if we did so, she would be unsatisfied. In large part because

3. Our communication was never very good. 

So it was definitely my call to end things. Not an easy decision to make, but i think that the main thing that could've lead me towards a future with Q was inertia. And that's no good reason. Yes, i love her, but somehow not enough. i had trouble imagining buying a ring for her. And "maybe why not?" seems like terrible reasoning to enter marriage. 

Also, life with Q has never been easy for either one of us. We both put in loads of effort, yet often felt like we put in more than the other, or that the other didn't recognize what efforts had been made, what injustices had been swallowed. 

On the whole i feel like i did the right thing for both of us, but today was still a bit tough. We packed out all her stuff (which was most of the stuff in the apartment), and inadvertently said goodbye to the little presents we'd given and received over the past 1070 days. 

Q has always found it bizarre that i'm friends w/ a bunch of my exes, as that's definitely not the norm in China. But it looks like we're going to give it a go. i think this is really courageous on her part. i hope to be a good friend to her.

She really is an amazing person. Intelligent, caring, artistic, beautiful, intuitive... It may have been the rockiest relationship i've ever been in, but it's still pretty amazing to have had the chance to be with her for our time together.