I am Jack's Broken Heart

I can't describe this feeling. It's somewhere between wanting to throw up and being held down by a 2 ton weight.
Today, Morgan moved out of the apartment we have been sharing for nearly three months to start his life in Raleigh. And, I have been left behind.

I feel so empty, so lost. I keep waiting on him to come through the door with Bojangles biscuits or emerge from the bathroom with his cropped hair dark and wet, shirtless telling me about how McDonald's makes their chicken nuggets and what gun my favorite movie character is using during an action scene while I'm watching TV. But he's not here...

Instead, I'm locked up in my room unable to leave because my roommate (who is not even here) promised his room to two old friends of his. And, they have taken over the apartment, bringing in guests of their own. I don't even know these people! Never met them before in my life.

I have been sitting in my room since he left. I tried to start working on a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle of a humpback whale leaping into the sky while fish, two dolphins, and a shark swim around its tail still in the waves. I couldn't concentrate on it enough to even finish all the edge pieces. I have been playing movies nonstop on the television, films that deal with lovers having to be separated but having just enough action that I don't cry through the whole thing, such as The Constant Gardener and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I will cry then lull myself into silence then stare for a long time then begin crying again. Sparta comes in and out of the bedroom obviously finding the new people in the house more entertaining and interesting than the owner he sees every day. Other than him, I am alone, so terribly and scarily alone. Nothing and nobody can part me from Morgan's pillow, which he left behind for me. I feel the weight of the dogs tags I custom made around my neck, a pair for him and a pair for me, as his birthday present. One tag has my name and information, the other his. They are identical, except for the color of the silencers. Earlier, I ate the remainder of the brownies we had baked together... a large yet unsatisfying portion in a round metal pan. I nibbled on a peanut butter sandwich and went through some flavored Tootsie Rolls, but have not yet found an appetite.

Our perfect Christmas is over. Since Saturday after Morgan's graduation, we have had the apartment to ourselves with my roommates either gone home for the holidays or at work an hour away. One day we went to the WNC Nature Center, walking around a track to see gray wolves, coyotes, bobcats, a petting zoo, and other various North Carolina mountain critters. In the evenings, we shared popcorn and watched whatever was playing on ABC Family's "25 Days of Christmas." In the mornings, we slept in, curled into each other before making a hot breakfast like pancakes and/or scrambled eggs. Sometimes, we would get Bojangles for dinner or Japanese. One night I cooked spaghetti. One night Stuart made hamburgers, which unfortunately I missed out on as I was suffering from nausea from my bout of acute mono.

Yesterday morning we pretended it was Christmas morning. I woke Morgan from sleep by jumping on the bed yelling that Santa had come and we needed to open presents immediately! After an hour of his grumbling and delaying, we, including Sparta, made it out into the living room. Morgan opened his gift of a book he'd been dying to read from me. I got super warm mittens from him. Afterwards, we had hot pancakes and eggs while watching survival shows on Discovery Channel and "Spartacus: Blood and Sand."

We ruled the apartment together. It was the greatest five days of my entire 2010 year. I've never been so happy! Not since before The Viking and my parents' divorce. It was the greatest Christmas gift anyone has ever given me. It was better than any white Christmas.

Now, Morgan is gone. After he left, I took down our little Christmas tree by myself putting our Dollar Tree ornaments into a keepsake box and throwing the stub of a tree into the woods outside the apartment. It was discouraging and heartbreaking. We had kept the tree lit nearly every night since putting it up after Thanksgiving. Now, it is lying outside in the cold waiting to decay.
Soon, I will see Morgan again when we reunite to spend more of the holidays together. However, our life together at the apartment is over. It's very likely he won't be back here again thanks to his full-time job starting in January. And as Morgan pointed out to me a week ago, we don't know when we'll be living with or even near each other again. The dog tags we share say "212" on the last line; it's how long from January 1st to the day my apartment lease runs out and I am free to move as close to him as I want.

What we shared was a week of pure happiness. Now, we must continue on with life. ...But I don't know how. I feel like I've lost my home.