Anticipation

I wasn't really being sent away... not really. It wasn't like that. We had an understanding, he and I. It meant that sometimes we just needed time alone.

He needed that time now - to think and catch up on the work he couldn't seem to get done when I was around. I understand that it would be easier for him to work for school while I was safely hidden in my dorm room half and hour away... but it still hurt to be away from him.

I had gotten so used to him being right there - to waking up when he crawled into bed at five or six in the morning - to falling peacefully asleep again in his arms. I was used to getting up in the morning and having to untangle myself from the sheets and from his arms. I was used to the constant teasing, the softness in his eyes when we really spoke... even our stubborn arguments about English and my writing.

I was used to them... and even a day away made me miss it. So I try to avoid the hurt by submerging myself in an assignment he hadn't really given me - not directly - but indirectly.

He's only trying to help with my writing, I know. He's trying to make me put emotion into it... so here I am, trying to explain something I feel but don't really have the words to say. I didn't want it, but I understood what was going on...

"Hurt" was the wrong word... I wasn't hurt that he needed me gone for a night, wasn't even hurt that I couldn't see him again until tomorrow night. But there was something, something hard in the middle of my chest that made it hard to breathe when I watched him drive away.

It was almost like being abandoned... not by him, but by myself. I had forced myself into abandonment on campus because I had not made a spot for myself there. So I released myself, with his help, upon a world I didn't belong in... around people I didn't understand - even less than those I could even half-way call my friends.

I know the answer... it's just too simple.

I need to meet more people.

But how can I do that when I miss him so much? And for these moments without him - all I want is him. I can't think of others when I know he's so close... and I know that if I still had my car, I could still be by his side tonight.

That's what drives me to madness - to this hollow empty feeling of being lost... the fact that something keeps me from him. I can think of no one else until I satisfy my need to be right there... right there beside him.

Tomorrow... I must hold out until tomorrow.