So J and I are splitsville. Why I am using the phrase splitsville, I have no clue. But basically, both of us were feeling that this wasn't going to last too much longer, and when both of you know the end is coming, essentially, the end has come.
He'd been talking for the past few days about how he's been actively looking to buy his plane ticket (to Norway) for early January. (For those catching up, J, now my 'ex-boyfriend', is moving to Norway for at least a couple years as soon as he can get out there.) So he's looking at Jan 8. Which is a little while away, but basically, here's the deal. Once he gets his plane ticket, his next biggest priority is to spend as much time as possible with his old friends, elementary school, high school buddies. The people who are really a part of his life. I accept that I'm low on that scale; we've known each other for a month and a half. He really loves his friends, and he wants to milk this time for all it's worth, because he's going to be inaccessibly, expensively far away for a long, if not indefinite, period of time. Especially since some of his friends are still in college, they'll be coming home for winter break and that'll be his chance to see them. So I would be second fiddle to that, which, along with working, would basically take his time. We recently discussed how I don't like to play second fiddle, how if he's going to be the 'man in my life', then he'd have to be willing to (sometimes) put me first. So we realize that this wouldn't really work.

We're great together. And I could have said, Hey, I can be there for you until you leave--I understand you gotta do this, but I can be here too, I can take the back seat for a little while. But who would I be kidding? I could have said that, but when the time came, it would have been too much stress on my heart to be there for an absentee boyfriend only to say goodbye to him in January.

That's the clincher. The deadline. Of course. He'll be gone for a long time; it isn't like a semester away. And he may be there for longer. And our relationship had no history, nothing to hold on to. Whether or no, it would be over once he left for Norway. And like I said, right, when you both know the end is coming, the end has essentially come. If you want something to last 'forever', aka 'past the present moment', you have to act like it's going to last forever, and you can't act like it's going to last forever when you know that it won't.

We closed it well. We understood each other. We weren't cold. That night (Sat) we had gone to see a show, which was A-mazing, hung out at a bar, then went to his place and watched a movie. It was at the bar that it came out. And we talked so well, we talked about everything that mattered in a way that communicated everything essential. Everything honest came flowing out, everything good and everything what signalled the end. We held each other with a lot of tenderness, and we were intertwined and nearly asleep during the movie.

What was most important was that we understood each other. We did this to save each other's heart and for a proper letting go. And when we kissed, it was like, ach, it was like we were trying to give each other all the feeling we had left, all the desire and all the warmth and all the fondness and consideration and hope, it was like we were trying to give it back to the other person; like Here, this is yours, take it, I want you to have it, take it with you. With every kiss we tried to give each other everything that was left, only to find that there was always something left. The kisses would not get any less sweet, and so we simply had to stop.

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This Ben Folds song that I'm really diggin' on, I don't know the title, is genius. These lyrics have been running in my head for the past two days:

I thought I'd write, I thought I'd let you know / In the years since you've been gone I've finally let you go / You could take the time to try and drop a note / But if you won't, then you won't / And I will consider you gone.

It relates more to Avi than it does to J, but even if it didn't relate to anything in my life, it would still be one of The Most Beautiful Songs. Seek it out if you can.

12:21 a.m. 2003-11-17�