It feels as though a giant invisible hand has picked us all up and flung us through time. I know time passes quickly when you are busy, but this is ridiculous. We are not approaching the new year so much as hurtling towards it. I hardly have time to savor the consequences of my own actions before moving on to the next big thing. Is anyone else feeling this way? I have some half-baked conspiracy notion involving global warming cooking the earth, and setting all particles into super-duper Brownian motion (do bear in mind when reading this that I got a C in high school physics, and that I am a shameless punstress).

In the middle of the rush, there remain a few still moments. You wake up and discover that you and your partner, your soul mate and confidante of five years, are living different lives. Not only that, but these lives are diverging from each other at the same harried pace as everything else. This is when time slows down and the nights are long, the rest of sleep forbidden to you. This is when thoughts rattle through your head like gravel pebbles, settling into the crevices and folds of your brain. It’s hard carrying the burden alone.

Then, suddenly, it’s over. You have a long conversation, one that has been building up word-by-word over the months, and then it’s over. It ends in tears, yes, but no explosions or fireworks; just quiet words. Laughter, even, and joking about how your mother will handle two daughters now, unwilling to have a traditional wedding.

When you cry, they are not tears of desperation. There’s mourning, for a full and lovely relationship that ends. There’s gratitude for the fact that he and you are not dead or gone from each other’s lives, that he will continue to be there for you and you for him. There’s slight apprehension for the future, but also the hope that once you work on yourself a bit more, that life will work out so that you are back together again. Above all, there is pride in how far you have both come along in five years, together and apart.