She brought the rain with her, and left an earthquake in her trail.

No, really, there was a magnitude 7.0 earthquake here, today, though it was 500 miles away.

It's just funny. Funny how the little things don't matter, funny how fast it all went by, funny how I'm sitting here waiting, simply dying for that text message to arrive, letting me know she landed in Minnesota.

Yeah, she's on a plane now. Traveling away from me as fast as humanly possible.

I watched her go.

And after I saw that, I didn't want to come home. I didn't want to see everything, sitting there just as it was when we left. Disorderly. A week's worth of mess, left disorganized by two people rushing off to an international airport.

I didn't want to look at the unwashed dishes, still covered with syrupy pancake remnants. The breakfast we ate together.

I didn't want to look at that place, to be alone there, again, like I was the first night I arrived.

Alone and empty.

Why do we put ourselves through this?

Why do human beings force themselves into situations that rip their bodies apart and tear their hearts in two?

The train ride back was fucking cold, long, and a pair of large silly sunglasses covered my eyes the entire way. But somehow, during that hour and a half long trip, the sun had disappeared, though I wasn't using the sunglasses for conventional means.

The sun was gone.

I noticed it on the way to the airport.

What started as a pleasant day grew colder and colder, and after that final hug goodbye, things had truly sunk back into a wintery chill that was perfectly suitable for a time like this, a time when you give one final wave to the one who keeps you warm at night. Then they turn and are gone.

It's that final hug that was so crushing.

No... It's the moment after--when you walk away, descend four elevators and hop into a train--that you realize you are alone again.

You ride that fucking train and you think about what you are going to do today, and then you remember that you aren't home. You're 6,000 miles from home and the best thing in your life just walked onto a 747. You ride that fucking train and you tell yourself that if you write anything today, you won't include the words "fucking" or "god damn."

But fucking god damn.

You're by yourself again, and it hurts, again.

It's inappropriate to lay down in a train car, yes, but every bone in my body was begging me to move from that rigid vertical position and just let my body rest, just let everything flow out and down to the ground. My body was begging me to collapse.

And I sat wondering what in the world I should do.

Simply resuming things as they were seemed impossible.

But going home to that cold, empty apartment, sheets still a mess, syrupy bowls still in the sink, was impossible, too.

...

But I'm here now.

And boy is this place fucking empty.

I'm not going to lie, I really can't write very well. So sorry. Maybe you understand how I feel, maybe you don't. But try to smile today, try to laugh. I did.

It's all we can really do to keep ourselves going.

It's what I did when I first got here.

It's what I have to do now.

Saying goodbye is always a strange feeling. We say goodbye when we go to Japan, we say goodbye when we leave Japan. We even say goodbye from Japan.

It's never easy when someone walks out of your world, and it's never easy to walk out of someone's.

And as much as I'm looking forward to June and a return to everything familiar--a return to home, to Sara--I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye again. That has always been my biggest fear about coming back to Japan: knowing that one day I'm going to have to say goodbye for a long time.

Today reminded me a bit about saying goodbye.

It's the worst feeling in the universe.