Here's a story from Indonesia that never made it into this blog. (Lots of stories didn't, actually, because of the chronic electrical outages, my bouts of apathy where I felt like writing down absolutely nothing in hopes that it would all go away, etc.)

This one didn't make it because it comes across heavy and sad no matter how I rewrite and rewrite it. It's the story of my last day spent there, a day mostly spent alone while Nick spent the afternoon in the air en route to Jakarta.

Our mornings were always chaotic and it would have been odd if our last one hadn't been. Six months of waking up entangled in the mosquito net, green mesh monsterifying our hands and faces... or being bolted from sleep by karaoke Michael Jackson blasting through our floor, complete with soft Indonesian vowels and inflections that suggest the singer has no idea of the meaning of the words... or having our ears buzzed in by mouse-sized, flying cockroaches. It would have been crazy and somehow wrong if our last morning had been spent lying quietly in bed, eating jackfruit, rambutan, mango, and papaya salad and listening to the twittering of tropical birds.

Knowing all of that, though, didn't make it any easier when we slept through the dying-battery alarm beep of my iPod and I ended up having exactly 8 minutes to say goodbye to Nick as he threw on his clothes and shoved things haphazardly in his duffel bag, all to the tune of the frantic honking of the taxi in the driveway.

With my body inexplicably barricading the door, I watched him put his clothes on. I watched the cloth settle and each button snap into place. When he had finished, he grabbed his duffel bag and, in the same motion, turned to leave. He actually walked into me, he was so determined to keep moving. My big toe under his big toe, we stared at each other for a collection of the most awkward moments that maybe we’d ever shared

We didn't know how to say goodbye to each other. There was at once everything and nothing to say, and maybe the 8 minutes made it easier, so we didn't have time to fumble and make it worse. The problem was that we went radically opposite ways. While he chose the pretend-it's-not-a-big-deal-and-do-it-quick method, I couldn't let go of him once I hugged him, even though I'd spent the last six months hating him. And when he finally peeled me off and went downstairs to say the rest of his goodbyes, I kept thinking, no one but me is appreciating the rough canvassy feel of his shirt or the way his wrists poke out awkwardly from the too-short sleeves. They don't see that one of his eyes is heavily lidded and drifts towards other things as the other eye fixes on you, squinty, focused, and bright. They don't deserve to be the last people to touch him. They don’t deserve to be the last people to hug him.

They were the last people to see him, though, because I didn't watch him get in the taxi. I turned before the front door had even closed and walked blindly back up the stairs to our room, where I sat in his empty closet for I still don't know how long, but it was long enough that I got hungry for breakfast, which eventually morphed into the kind of hunger that's been around so long that the thought of food is slightly nauseating.

It is strange both to write this and to remember it, because I rarely make dramatic, storybook-like gestures like that automatically. When I was a kid I could never throw a good tantrum because I would start thinking of all the times in books and movies kids lay on the floor throwing tantrums, and I'd worry about being a conformist. And whenever something dramatic happens, like I find myself suddenly in love, I'm only in that euphoric mindspace for a moment before I start wondering how many times I've read a book where someone falls in some kind of terrible false love that comes back and bites them in the ass.

That kind of meta-awareness and self-consciousness only serves to thrust me far from the present moment, which is exactly the opposite of what I wish would happen. But it stands; I can't be dramatic without thinking about how dramatic I'm being.

This particular time, though, I fell more into the present than I think I ever have. I didn't think about how absurd and overdone it was that I would actually sit in my now ex-boyfriend's empty closet and cry and ignore the leg cramps and hunger pains and the slowly growing dehydration headache and cry and cry. I had not one thought about how it was so teenage novellish of me to do so, not until the end, hours and hours later, when I finally thought, 'Look at me, sitting in this closet... just look at me... LOOK AT ME' in a rage and forced myself out with thoughts of how embarrassing it would be to think back on later.

The other teachers took me out to Black Sands beach later that day. Our motorcycle was already sold, so we took a taxi there and back, and I didn't even stop to think about how much it would cost to have the driver detour us all the way to the village. I had extra trouble with the slippery red sand by the first cliff, and fell more often in the trees on the way down, and was colder, less tired, less cautious and generally in a daze. We saw my favorite village girl, Naomi, (who often dammed up the creek with us and whirlpooled in it with us, even though it was obvious she found it strange and pointless) and I hardly even spoke to her. I smiled for lots of 'last day' pictures and in all of them, I look very bubbly. Nothing looks amiss in my face. To everyone else, I probably looked not one mark off of normal, even though mostly I felt like I was half-dreaming, half-dreading my flight the next day

A companion will not be able to save you if you slip in the red dirt of a path and tumble to your death on the cliffs and the waves below. In fact, he'll mock you by being able to do it perfectly himself. He won't make it any easier to ride your bike without crashing it; in fact, he'll throw it off balance by shifting on the back. He will not be of any help when you're being hassled for money; in fact, he's always the one that whips your wallet out for all to see and pays the fake tariffs ('sitting-on-the-beach tax', 'picking-up-a-package-tax', etc). He will always want to stay home when you want to go out, and vice versa.

He will not make any difference if your plane crashes, or if it's delayed to the point that you miss your connecting one. He won't make it any less embarrassing when your anxiety leads you to have to pee every 20 minutes and have to wake up the guy on the aisle seat to clamber over him every time you do it. And he won't make it any more comfortable to sleep in a 3x3 square box as you are jostled and tumbled around in a storm over Vancouver.

But all these things aside, and the fact that we fought all the time aside, that last day was enough to make me realize that this experience would have been another animal entirely if I had done it alone.