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Last Call
The emotional toll of almost-beginnings
One of the starkest realizations of adulthood is this: there are other things in life more important than romantic love.
You have other things to do. He has other things to do. Those things have to get done. There’s no workaround. You can’t follow him to a new state, start a new job there, and wait for those free couple of hours per week when he has leftover time.
You’ve built a hard-earned and customized life for yourself. He’s just starting to do that for himself.
He can’t call you every day. He can’t even be quietly, emotionally attached to you while he studies fifteen hours a day to graduate with honors and become the kind of professional star you’re going to read about in Time Magazine in the future.
You get what you get.
You got the few months before he moved away. You got the two evenings you spent together, talking, joking, stupidly thinking, “This is totally fine. I’m an adult. Much of my ability to feel emotions has expired anyway. I’ll be just fine when he leaves.”
You still wish he was here. Then, you could bury your face in his chest, ugly cry, your own arms pulling him closer, trying to defy the reality that this is…
