When Your Relationship Has An Expiration Date

When your relationship has an expiration date, you don’t think. You just do. And by expiration date, I don’t mean something bad occurring to split you apart. No, only time or distance is responsible for this kind of fateful date. The date you knew existed going into the relationship but chose to ignore. The date you explain to everyone when you talk about him and they ask who he is. The date you use to justify why things aren’t official between you two even though it’s been two months.

In a short time things between you will come to an end, so you tell yourself to have fun and appreciate his company until that day comes. It would be silly to deprive yourself of nice things. Like fucking every time you hang out and soaking up every last drop of the other until reality calls and you remember that school or work or life in general outside of this human exists, and although you’re enjoying yourself more than you have in a very long time, you know you can’t make this person a priority, because there is no future or possibilities, only now. And the future does not pause for you to stay up late at night fucking. The future hits you like a frying pan to the head when you wake up the next morning and have things to do but cannot function properly because of the lack of sleep you got.

You never thought you’d get so caught up in another person. You question whether it’s the expiration date that is making you feel this way. You do spend an awfully large amount of time together, understanding there are only so many days left. But there’s something about this one. Something that seems so right and beautiful. You don’t want to let it go. But you don’t know how to tell him either. Because to tell him would be to go against everything the relationship was founded upon: the mutual understanding that it would end when distance came into play. And the real kicker is that you’re the one who inferred this would happen because you thought that is what he wanted and he didn’t say otherwise. So here you are.

You make yourself paranoid that he may be seeing other girls, but you keep your rational thoughts to yourself and you keep acting like the thought of him leaving is not usually on your mind when you’re together. You want to have a conversation with him about staying together but at the same time, you know how you function in long distance relationships from experience, and it’s not good. And besides, you have no idea how he truly feels about you.

You want him to remain in your life and that’s all you know for now. With each day you’re beginning to surrender to the inevitable. You’re young and on the move. And timing’s a real bitch.