I still can't quite believe this is real, despite the fact that I've been crying for the past 21 hours.

It doesn't feel like he left me. I'm not angry. I couldn't possibly be angry. I'm just sad. It feels like he's dead. He's dead and I'll never see him again, except for every time I close my eyes.

All I can think about are the nevers: I will never fall asleep next to him again with his hand resting on my waist. I will never ride with him in his car again, holding his hand and singing together loudly some obnoxious pop song. He will never teach me how to drive stick in his dad's truck. I'll never visit with his parents or his sweet cats again. I will never go to Texas and meet his best friend. I will never go to a Savoyards party with him and stand proudly and quietly at his side again. I will never kiss him again, or play with the scruff on his face, or fix his shirt collar, or get to tell him how much I love him.

Because I still love him--so much I can't even contemplate ever meeting someone new. I can't imagine some other guy making me laugh like he did, or hugging me quite like he did, or kissing me tenderly like he did. I don't want to.

I'm trying to be rational, to remember every reason he gave and know that I had worried about those exact same things for months. But it isn't working. So many things were obstacles to our relationship, but I wanted to work through them. I wanted to try to keep going. We may have almost nothing in common, but if we fell so deeply in love with one another, doesn't that count for anything?

It was one year, six months, two weeks, and one day. I'm watching our relationship flicker through my mind like a movie on fast-forward. Certain things keep standing out: the first time I met his family, Thanksgiving 2008, and his brother making fun of my age; that time I made him so angry at me last summer when I went to see the Harry Potter movie without him; the Greensboro Grasshoppers game a couple weeks ago when I thought everything was wonderful; the first and last times we ever had sex; our first Christmas together, which was magical and romantic; him meeting my extended family last August, I meeting his last June; sitting in his car in the Brightleaf Square parking lot on one of our very first dates, November 10 2008, and telling each other everything we could think of about our lives; the first time we said we loved each other and he drew the smiley face in the fogged-up glass of my car's rear window; the big fight we had earlier this semester when he said he believed I would go to hell; dinner dates when I felt so special and he smiled at me like I was perfect; him playing video games with my brothers; snuggling on the couch at Amelie's; going to his a capella group's concerts even though I hate being in that kind of church; everything, running back and forth and blending together.

I don't ever want to forget this. But it has to fade eventually if I ever want the pain to stop. How can I tell people about him? He can't be reduced to one sentence: "My ex was super Christian, brown hair, brown eyes, 5'7" or so, we were together a year and a half." I can't do that. They'll never know what I know--that he loved animals more than people most of the time, that he bought these really goofy Heelys and I teased him about it, that he has ichthyosis, which is a skin disorder, that he cries in sad movies but not in real life (usually).

I almost wish he had died, because then I would be allowed to still love him. I would be the grieving widow of sorts, but now I'm just the girl that got dumped and can't get over him. I feel like the heroine in a movie about ill-fated lovers, but a movie that no one would watch because the ending isn't happy.

He said he still loves me. We hugged for a long time and cried into each other's shirts, and I said I didn't want this to be the last time I hugged him. He said it wouldn't be. I don't believe that. I don't think we can be friends. Being friends with someone I love so fiercely would be like constantly ripping open the scars of losing him and rubbing acid into them. I want him to be happy, but I don't want to meet his new girlfriends and see him get married to someone else. It would tear me apart to see her standing where I should be standing at the altar.

So.

I guess it's really over. I wanted to spend my whole life with him, but now I can't even spend another day in his company.

I loved you then, I love you now, and I will love you always, Ben.

I should probably go drink some water now. This took me an hour to write and I sobbed the whole way through it.