This is about a girl, and it's a long story. I don't have anyone or anyplace else to go to but the internet to get help.

For years I wanted to come to Japan to just get away from my small town upbringing - it wasn't even Japan in particular that I cared about so much as just finding a world outside the place I was born and grew up in.

When I got here things were new and exciting, but it faded fast...that's when I met her - an English girl (and I'm an American) who seemed to have so much in common with me. She offered to help me with my Japanese and started coming to my dorm room to help, but we just talked. She had just gotten dumped by her boyfriend because he wanted to sleep with other women. Incidentally, he had the same first and last name as me...I didn't think anything of it at the time. After a couple days I told her how I felt about her as she was about to leave my room, and she just responded by saying "come here" and began kissing me - we sat for hours just doing that. It was crazy how right it felt. Within the next couple of days we had sex, and it felt amazing to be wanted, but I was inexperienced and couldn't last long at all - she claimed she didn't mind.

Over the next 4 months we did everything together - went to class together, explored together, slept together, showered together, all of it. My common sense perished so quickly - she was a year older than me and I just assumed she knew what she was doing. I was afraid it wasn't giving her enough personal space, but I enjoyed it, and she stayed with me at all times without me ever once even asking. Within a month she told me she loved me, something I was reluctant to do because I am hesitant to say something like that so soon. Within two months she was talking about how she wanted to live with me someday, making plans about how we were going to do it and where. Within three months, lying in bed one night, she said to me: "someday I want to marry you..."

I was a sucker for things like that; I might even still be. I'm not driven away by the idea of commitment to someone I care so much about, but the truth eluded me because I just couldn't see that it was too soon - she had started dating me 2 weeks after getting dumped by a guy with the same name. Even though her major was Japanese, she was so negative about Japan after a while that she began to hate it...and so did I.

After 4 months together, we both went back to our countries for a month for Spring break. At the airport we cried about it, and she told me before I walked through the gate to "come back just as you are." Over the next month we skyped and talked just about everyday to stay in touch. It was like a trial for what I thought would be the inevitable long-distance we would face after our study abroad ended. One night she refused to Skype me after having an argument with her mother, which was really unlike her. She didn't notify me of anything for the whole next day, and I got so worried that I got annoyed...and I told her so. To complicate things, she saw her ex while she was back home to get her old stuff back that he had. However, she kept up saying that she loved me, that she wanted to live with me, even marry me.

The first day we got back to Japan, right from the airport, something felt wrong. She was different, unenthused to see me. When we got back to our dorm, after about 45 minutes she said she would like to spend more time alone that semester, which I thought was fine. What I didn't expect was that she meant that moment - and with that, she went to her room, leaving me alone after we had been away for a month.

From that day onward, she refused sex every single time, saying she was not in the mood. When I asked her about it, she couldn't give me any answers, she just claimed that she didn't know what was going on. She said that she needed time to figure things out. In the back of my mind I knew all along that at this point she was losing interest in me...my parents and friends that I consulted were all telling me that she had either cheated on me or had been brought back to reality when she went home. To make matters worse, she began talking to our "friends" behind my back saying she didn't "know what to do" and that she wasn't "feeling very relationship-y."

At first, I tried to understand, but things went without improving at all for over a month. I began to grow so horribly paranoid, so afraid of losing her because I felt that the level of commitment she had expressed, while not binding, could only have been said because she meant it. I had always thought she was different from other girls I had dated, even though we moved so quickly, so stupidly, and so irresponsibly. I grew so paranoid that I began checking her Facebook messages, which I never should have done, and read things that I wish I hadn't, because they just reinforced my paranoia. I noticed she messaged her ex congratulating him on getting a new job. I grew so terrified - she would hold my hand and kiss me and tell me good night and all that, but she would turn around and tell others that things weren't going well. We even went to Tokyo for her birthday (after I had already spent money on buying her presents and a cake) and all we did was hang out with her friends from home the whole time; she even pulled out of meeting my friend from home that lived in Tokyo even though I spent the first two days just with her friends. It felt like she didn't care about me or my life, as she became increasingly Anglo-centric.

I would try to bring it up to her, because she would never talk about it, but all she would do is cry and talk about how she hated herself, or how she didn't know what was going on, but I think in retrospect that she knew all along. In the end, I initiated the idea of a break-up, but I told her that I didn't really want to because I wanted to make it work. A few weeks later, we had another talk and we decided to take a week break. She came around everyday that week, and we would hug and kiss, but nearing the end of the week, she grew cold. The last day, we went on a walk and talked, but she didn't bring it up for hours until I finally did. After 8 months even together, on our "anniversary" if you can really call it that, she broke up with me after we had taken a week off. 30 minutes later, we had to go to an all-you-can-drink buffet party for a friend, and I couldn't even look at her. I went home, drunk and alone. I felt suicidal for the next week.

I tried a couple times to talk to her about it but she said a couple times that she didn't want to try again. I felt so alone and abandoned - and angry. I felt as if the things she had said to me were just that of an immature girl who hadn't thought anything through. I couldn't understand the idea that she could tell people she loves them when she didn't really mean it. She told me that she "meant it at the time" and that she thinks we have very different views of love.

Now, over a month and a half later, I am going home in two days, likely to never see her again. She hasn't talked to me in any way, shape, or form in nearly two weeks. She has pictures of herself all over Facebook smiling, going places, looking happy. I have been socially isolated now because most of the other exchange students I knew well were girls, who all flocked to her. My life hasn't felt so empty in years. I feel like I can accomplish anything and that I'm going to become what I want, but it feels empty without her or someone out there.

All I feel is anger, distrust of women, and isolation. I didn't think throughout the whole relationship that we were moving too fast for her...I just assumed she realized it, because she was the one that said she loved me, wanted to live with me, even marry me first, without me saying anything to prompt it. I hope so much that going home will reverse these feelings, but I'm terrified of the idea of never getting over her. I was scared and paranoid, and it feels like she just beat herself to death on me and then just pulled away when she got bored. I feel cheated and lied to, and I can't think about anything I've done in Japan without thinking of her, because everywhere and everyplace reminds me of what we did together. This has been the most pivotal year of my life, with so many things happening both here and at home.

The last words I ever heard from my grandpa before he died a week after I came back to Japan after Spring break were "tell ____ she has a good boyfriend."

How am I going to get over her? She acts like she doesn't care at all, but she comes across as such a sweet, sensitive, and caring girl. She even did to me, even after she left me...Only this much later have I started to feel manipulated. I have no one to talk to and no one at home understands...my only way of venting has been the internet so far, but it just feels like I'm venting at air.