For the first month, I worked too much.
Then Priya called.
“How’s Europe?”
“I understand nothing.”
“Excellent.”
“My bicycle tried to kill me.”
“User error.”
“I got yelled at by a seventy-year-old woman.”
“Probably deserved.”
I laughed.
Then she asked:
“How are you really?”
That stopped me.
“Lonely.”
“Normal.”
“Regretful?”
I looked through the window of my temporary apartment.
Canal.
Rain.
Bicycles passing.
“No.”
That answer surprised me.
I missed Emily.
But I did not regret leaving.
Those were different emotions.
I started therapy in Amsterdam.
Actual therapy.
Not a friend with psychology opinions.
My therapist was a Dutch-American woman named Elise van Dijk.
During our third session, she asked:
“Why did you decline the position three times?”
“For Emily.”
“Why?”
“She didn't want to move.”
“That explains her decision.”
“Not yours.”
I hated therapy immediately.
I said:
“I loved her.”
“Love explains why her preference mattered.”
“It doesn't explain why yours disappeared.”
That sentence sat with me.
I began looking backward more honestly.
Emily had been selfish in real ways.
But I had also repeatedly offered sacrifice before requiring reciprocity.
Then I resented her for accepting what I kept offering.
That did not excuse Jake.
It did not excuse dismissing my concerns.
It simply gave me something useful to change in myself.
By month two, Amsterdam began becoming home.
I moved into a one-bedroom apartment overlooking a small park in Oud-West.
Bought a used bicycle.
Learned the tram system.
Found a coffee shop where the staff stopped answering me in English automatically.
My Dutch remained terrible.
But improving.
At work, the integration project finally began moving.
One architecture decision I proposed reduced deployment failures enough that our European director mentioned it during a quarterly meeting.
Three months later, I received expanded responsibility over another team.
Not a promotion yet.
A clear path.
I took weekend trips.
Utrecht first.
Then Brussels.
Paris with coworkers.
Cologne in December.
I sent photographs to my parents.
Never social media.
I did not want my life to become a performance aimed at someone back home.
Friends still updated me occasionally.
I never asked.
Marcus did anyway.
“You want to know about Emily?”
“No.”
“Great.”
“So she and Jake are together.”
I stared at him through the video call.
“You are terrible at boundaries.”
“You're welcome.”
“How are they?”
Marcus shrugged.
“Very online.”
“What does that mean?”
“Lots of festival photos.”
“Road trips.”
“Captions about choosing adventure.”
I smiled faintly.
“Good for them.”
I meant it.
Mostly.
If Jake was actually the person Emily wanted, then leaving had been right for everyone.
For a while, they seemed happy.
That part is important because the story people later told became too neat.
Emily did not instantly regret leaving me.
She and Jake dated.
Officially.
They traveled.
Went to Montreal.
Nashville.
Iceland, apparently, using a discounted package Jake found.
Emily quit her marketing job four months after our breakup.
That was the decision that changed everything.