he won't commit but won't let me go

She was beside me in bed, still, her breathing quiet. Even then, I kept remembering the way she would look at me, taking in every detail of my face, as if she was trying to check if I was okay. I used to listen for her murmurs as she slept, the small sounds that filled the space between us every night.

There were so many little things. The way she woke in the morning, eyes still closed, head tilted back. The way we’d get excited over small gifts for each other, picked up on the way home. How we bonded over food. These moments made up our life together.

But there was always the background noise of language and culture. Our shared language was the one I grew up with, but I was never fully fluent. She wasn’t either, not quite. I didn’t speak her mother tongue, and she didn’t speak English. Our conversations always had a limit.

I am an extrovert. My social life matters to me, but most of my friends couldn’t talk to her. I tried to find friends we could both see, people who wouldn’t make us work so hard to understand. It was difficult, though sometimes we managed.

Her friends were mostly from her own country. She was never very outgoing, and I was usually left out of her gatherings. If I joined, I just nodded, smiled, and stayed on the edges.

When it was just us, we spent our time together—often watching Netflix, hunting for something we could both understand. There weren’t many options, but we made do.

I am a comedian and a writer. She couldn’t fully understand what I did on stage, or read my work. She never got to see the side of me that mattered most, the part that made others laugh. That always sat with me.

Maybe that’s why I started making bad choices. I began staying out late, spending time with other women. I never cheated, but I was close to the line. I hoped if I pushed things, something would become clear. It didn’t.

I worried about the future. We were in the only country where things worked, but if we moved, one of us would struggle. In the US, she would have a hard time. In her country, it would be me. We’d both have to learn a new language to talk to friends and family, and neither of us had made much progress with that, even after almost three years.

Last night, I ended it. We still live together, so that night we slept in the same bed, just like always. While I was asleep, she drank four airplane bottles. The sound of her sobbing and throwing up in the bathroom woke me.

When it was just us, it felt perfect. But it didn’t add up outside those moments.

I didn’t want to keep her waiting while I tried to figure everything out. She’s thirty. I’m almost out of my twenties. Nearly three years, and I still had the same uncertainties as I did at the start. It didn’t feel fair.

Now I keep thinking maybe this was a huge mistake. But I also wonder if getting back together would just mean ending up here again, only later.