Today is August 12, 2011. Today is the day that my best friend leaves me, alone, for 10 long months. It's been a long time since we've been apart for that long, and I don't remember it being quite this painful.

He left a few minutes ago, in his car. I went out with him to give him the last hug I'll have for awhile, and went back inside before he could drive away with the GPS system his wonderful aunt gave him telling him how to drive to Canada. How to leave this country and his loving girlfriend behind for ten months so that he can study theoretical physics. I'm sure if I'd have stayed I'd have been able to squeeze out another hug or steal one last kiss. But I couldn't do it. Not without breaking down and crying like a huge baby, which won't actually make me feel any better, only worse. Worse that I missed that last hug, worse that those few last seconds I threw away and I won't be able to get them back.

I remember last night, lying on the couch with my head on his chest falling asleep purely out of comfort and the feeling of being safe and loved while watching Doctor Who, and now it seems like a lifetime ago. I missed him then, and he was pressed against me. And I regret not dedicating that time to loving him, instead of wasting it pining over the fact that in a few hours, he'd be on his way to Canada. Eight hours away. So far away that I wouldn't be able to sneak up behind him and steal a hug, or jump on his back on his way back to his computer, or even sidled up and steal a bit of whatever he was eating or drinking.

I turned on the TV when I came back inside over an hour ago, so that I could try to watch the Doctor Who I missed last night while I was falling asleep, and I've been staring at the TV but I haven't seen any of it. I have no idea what's going on. I can't focus on it. I don't want to focus on it. I just want to have him in my arms, but I have to wait until Christmas, maybe. He doesn't even know if he gets Christmas break.

He means so much to me, and I can't even tell him accurately how much, because the words do not exist in the English language. I don't have any way of showing him or telling him in one sitting what he means to me, but I often try, and I know he can tell it's a huge amount, but neither one of us know. My life has changed so much since I've met him, and I've grown so much. And now he's leaving, and it's so painful because he's leaving not knowing what he means to me.

I've had two hours of sleep tonight, in between helping him pack, and him leaving, and I can't sleep. I don't feel tired, just drained. The next week is going to be rough. I'm not working, I have to move back into my mother's house (we've been staying with his mother, she's fantastic), and I'm not going to be able to turn around and snap off something witty or hilarious, or share my thoughts, or anything with him, as I have all summer. I feel like George Weasley at the end of the Hogwarts Battle.

In ten months, my best friend will be home. I'll have him in my arms as I fall asleep, and we'll spend the summer getting an apartment in Maryland, and shopping, shopping, shopping to get our "swingin' pad", as he's call it, furnished and fit for the following school year, where he'll start his Ph.D. study, and I'll be busy finishing up my undergrad. And maybe we'll get a baby bunny, or a puppy, or both, and we'll love them as we love each other, and we'll stay up late going for runs, and we'll come back and eat snack wraps with our snooty-expensive health food wraps and apple chips and tuna fish. And we'll fill our apartment with books and books, and even more books, and we'll read them all. And we can stay up late and work on math problems and watch Doctor Who and browse the internet for interesting things. And we'll be stronger and smarter and better. And I can't think of him as having left. I have to think of him as coming back. Coming back to me, to be with me.

So here it goes. Today starts ten months. Ten months until he comes back. Ten months until we move in together, in our first apartment. Ten months to grow and become a better us.