23M, almost 1.5 years after my breakup and I still can't fully let go

I (23M) don't really know why I'm posting this, but I guess I need to get it off my chest. It's been almost a year and a half since things ended with my ex-girlfriend, and somehow it still hurts. We were together for 3 years. We lived together and had our own apartment for about 14 months. For a long time, I genuinely thought she was the person I was going to build my future with. Over time, things became complicated. She was an extremely shy person. At first it wasn't really an issue, but as time went on, she spoke less and less. Not only with my parents, but eventually even with me. The relationship between her and my family gradually deteriorated because they felt she never really engaged with them, and honestly, communication became difficult with everyone.

Near the end of the relationship, we barely even saw each other. She was finishing her master's degree in another city during the week, while I was working as a door-to-door sales representative selling fiber internet. My schedule was brutal. I was out in the field 12 hours a day, usually from around 9 AM to at least 9 PM. We were both exhausted, busy, and living almost separate lives despite technically still being together. Then one day in December, completely out of nowhere, everything ended. There was no big argument. No serious discussion. No warning. She came to the apartment, told me she was taking her things, packed up, and left. She also took both of our cats. We didn't even have a conversation about it, despite the fact that one of them was legally registered under my name. And that was it.

After three years together, after building a life together, after sharing an apartment, there wasn't even a real goodbye or closure. The part I'm struggling with is that after almost a year and a half, I still care about her. I know how ridiculous that probably sounds. My family always told me she wasn't the right person for me. Looking back, there were obvious problems. The lack of communication hurt. The way she left hurt. Taking the cats hurt. Everything about the ending hurt. And yet, despite all of that, I still have feelings for her. Not in the same way I loved her back then. It's different now. But there's still a lot of affection there, and I hate admitting it.

Recently, I found an old gift she gave me. Nothing special, just something I hadn't seen in a long time. I was genuinely seconds away from crying. What makes this even harder is that I don't understand why I still feel this way. I thought I had moved on. I thought I had accepted what happened. I thought I had turned the page. But apparently part of me never really did. I know some people will probably read this and think I'm a simp, weak, pathetic, whatever. Maybe they're right. I honestly don't know. I just know that after all this time, after everything that happened, a part of me still misses someone who walked out of my life without even giving me a chance to understand why. I don't even know what I'm expecting from posting this. Maybe I just needed to say it somewhere. Thanks for reading.