9:10am: toweled dry, applied coconut oil and clothes. sat at the kitchen table and typed in liveblog document while ex-boyfriend moved from room to room, packing for new jersey. exchanged casual nonsense-like comments sometimes. he’s letting me borrow his library card so i can print things today. watched him write his name and access code on a small piece of paper and thought ‘considerate [his name], kind [his name]’ in ‘giant misunderstood lummox on public display’ voice.

i said ‘it’s impossible to include everything.’ he said ‘yeah, i mean. you can’t.’ he said something about not wanting to read liveblog anymore because it was ‘a waste of his time.’ i said ‘do you feel bad reading it?’ he said ‘well. of course i feel bad when i waste my time.’ i said ‘what is it that you’re wasting exactly, is there anything specific,’ aware of his change in posture and lack of eye contact. remembered what i wrote about ‘how can people talk to someone willfully looking away’ and felt like it would be kind of me to stop talking. was also provoked by his tone. not angry-provoked, curious-provoked. like how it would feel if someone had said, ‘there are things about me that are fascinating, that i will never tell you, and i’ll never tell you why i won’t tell you.’

the way he stressed ‘waste.’ i don’t know. this is related to why we wouldn’t have worked. sometimes it feels like he’s making a special effort to avoid saying what’s bothering him. if changing the subject doesn’t work, he’ll say something acidic as a kind of warning about how little will be accomplished by talking about whatever it is. his face will look defeated and anguished. i’ve wondered if maybe he doesn’t think i’m smart enough to get it. like it wouldn’t be worth his time to condescend to someone not as smart as him. it’s less that this causes me to feel ‘stupid,’ more of a sad reminder that there is a limit to how much i’ll ever know about him. have sensed this quality of his since the beginning, but then it was more of an afterthought. he was so warm and bright and fun to talk to and sometimes i’d see this sadness about him, like something i’d learned alone and maybe intentionally forgotten, that i wanted to protect.

9:10–9:30am: ex-boyfriend made ‘hurry up’ gestures. i said ‘oh, that’s right, all of those important places you need to be. you’re on your way to big things, i forgot.’ he ignored or didn’t seem to hear me and i was glad.