Goodbye AJ

I stood in the airport in Europe with AJ. I had just been to visit him after he had returned home and despite my desperate attempts to slow down time, two weeks had flown by and I was at the very moment I had most dreaded for the entire year. 

I had my arms wrapped tightly around AJ's body, my face pressed into the sweatshirt he wore, the one he bought in the local bookstore a week before he left my hometown. I couldn't stop sobbing. He pulled my chin up and said,

"This isn't goodbye forever. We are going to have so many more good times and this is just the beginning. I love you so much." I wanted so badly to believe him but the very thought of going home without him, leaving him 5000 miles behind tore at my insides. I couldn't speak I was so distraught. How could the love of my life leave me like this? 

AJ and I preceded to kiss (as in make out in the middle of a very busy airport) goodbye for about 5 minutes straight. I then kissed him, the last time I have ever kissed him and walked away, tears burning in my eyes. 

As I sat on the airplane, 9 excruciating hours in front of me in which I couldn't be alone and curl up in my own personal ball of emotional agony, I stared out the window while the tears flowed generously down my hot cheeks. My mother patted me annoyingly on the shoulder.

"Don't worry honey," she said. "There are lots of other fish in the sea." I swear to god I could have shot my mother right there. To this day I still consider that one of the most insensitive and misdirected comments I've ever received. Despite being 17, I have never loved anybody the way I loved AJ and as my deranged love life marches on I start to wonder if I will ever find that again...