2010-01-21 / 4:07 p.m.

I'm halfway through packing to go to a hotel on the opposite side of the country with a whole family that I'm not a part of. I mean it - cousins, aunts, uncles and such. I'm the only one not related, but I suppose in a way it coincides with the fact that yesterday marked exactly three years to the night when I first kissed my boyfriend while drunken old men sang at us and most others averted their eyes. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I am in a serious relationship and the fact that I am just twenty years old. I've been in this thing since I was seventeen. I mean seventeen.
How old that used to seem. But I grew up some more, and even now, I find myself in a place where being twenty feels just like being a baby.

He brought me flowers last night and I did think to do something nice for him, but I'm at that place where it doesn't matter all that much now, so I lay on my bed after having cycled twelve miles to nowhere and read a Jay McInerney book by the light of a little purple booklight that was much too bright and every now and again thought about how he'd be here soon and how it's three whole years and that that should somehow matter. But I kept reading and breathing and being alone inside myself - my body and my head - and I thought nothing of when he arrived.
We lay together on my bed for what felt like a very long time and we laughed and talked a little, but not much - never all that much - and we kissed those little peckish forgettable kisses and we had sex and it felt like nothing and afterwards I felt like laughing about the fact that I am sleeping with my best friend, even still.
But after he left, I cried, and I don't know why, but I seem to do that more and more every time and I felt dirty and without excuses.

We share a lot of the same friends now after spending a substantial chunk of each other's lives being the other's lover so I don't often get to go out without him unless he's working or too busy. I find myself dependent and needy and crazy without him when I get drunk and I hate myself for it because I am not that person. That person is not me.

So I'm packing my bag, only I don't think I'll ever finish because I'm coming up with a lot of excuses and all I ask is this; is the thrill worth losing the comfort?