Last time I popped in, I reported that the ex was engaged.

Last week, he was in touch to tell me that he was moving to the west coast with his fiance. He’s moving on Sunday (as in the 27th) and he told me the other day that his goodbye bar party is Friday night. As I type this, that bar gathering is hours away.

He wants me to show up. He wants to say goodbye.

Why is he telling me this, you ask? Well, I don’t know if you’re asking, but my friends certainly asked. The ‘why’ doesn’t matter now that he’s told me, does it? I can’t unknow it.

I brought this up to BTH last night – the stopping by for this crazy goodbye – because I’m going to be out with Jersey and the ex’s bar is close to Jersey’s favorite bar, where she and I had planned to be. (I make this sound like New York City is like a 5 block radius). Plus, if I didn’t stop in for a five minute goodbye, the ex would surely come find me. I’m not being overly dramatic or rationalizing anything- he said that he’d do that.

BTH has no issue with it. Which surprised me two fold. I’m surprised at his coolnees about it and I’m surprised by my disappointment that he didn’t flinch at hearing the story.

There is an acid storm in my stomach. I cannot work at work because I am afraid that I’m going to be faced with something later on that I’m not prepared to see.

It doesn’t matter that I happily chose to spend my life with someone else – I am afraid that I will see, 13 years after meeting him, that he has stopped loving me. I don’t know what that looks like facially, but I’m sure that there is something in the face, in the eyes that unmistakably and devastatingly reads, “I don’t love you.”

I realize how childish I am being about this and I’m trying desperately to prepare the unflappable face that I will present for all of five minutes – when the reality is, I may not even need it.

It shouldn’t matter HOW he feels about me. I know this – and it doesn’t matter what the rational part of me knows. The other part, the one that can swallow my rationality like a snake, says that it matters…

I’d like to say that my life is fabulously exciting and that I’ve been traveling the world and that I found an agent for my book. Hell, I’d like to be able to report something that’s even terrible – but I’ve just been going to school and working. Yawn inducing stuff.

A season has officially changed and as we’re finally graced with I dubbed in my first column as Hissing Season, I’m pushed into a particularly reflective mode because my life has changed so much in the last year. And I’m afraid that I’m losing my handle on the things dearest to me.

I’m selfish. Utterly and completely. It might even be a somewhat redeemable quality that I can admit that. I’m used to solitude, to quiet, to time devoted to random thought and pen to paper. And I don’t have it anymore; I almost have to steal it from the non-stop working me that’s swallowed the smaller reflective me. Dwelling on it only makes me want to rip off my skin. If I don’t have the time for the self-reflection that in part defines who I am, am I losing a piece of myself? I don’t know when I’ll have the answer to that. I hope that I don’t have to answer that question and that I somehow reclaim the thought time that my sanity requires.

That and the ex – like THE ex – got engaged over the winter. He sent me an email, complete with pictures. I remember that he called me the day after I got engaged. When I answered the phone and he asked me what I was doing, I said, “Staring at my engagement ring.”

If he’s anything like me, then I know now how he felt when I said that to him. I didn’t want it to be me in those pictures – but in an alternate life, that was supposed to be me. His news made me remember a time that I’d nearly forgotten, when the idea of us getting married wasn’t completely preposterous.

I’m afraid that I’ll never stop being as possessive and selfish as I am and that I’ll always think that my exes still belong to me on some level. I may not want them – because if I had them back, what would I do with them? – but they are somehow mine in my head.

So that’s that. Nothing exciting. How are you?

No, really – think about it – how. are. you?

It’s sort of troublesome or at least makes you slightly uncomfortable when you stop to think actually about it, huh?