Disclaimer: If I owned "Roswell," Jason Behr would be mine! And not nine years older than me, either. I also don’t own "Separate Lives" by Phil Collins

Author’s Note: This is not a happy or productive piece of fanfiction. I watched my tape of "The Balance" and was inspired when my dad played his Phil Collins CD. It’s just the sad and emotional part of me.

"You called me from the room in your hotel
All full of romance for someone that you'd met
And telling me how sorry you were, leaving so soon
And that you miss me sometimes, when you're alone
Do I feel lonely too?"

In the late hours of December 5th, 1999, my world crumbled before my very eyes. My world crumbled in less than five minutes.

He tells me that we don’t belong together, that he’s just as scared as I am. But I’m not scared of being with him. I’m only scared that one day, he’ll get sick and I won’t know how to help him.

Max implies that he loves me. Then why can’t we be together? I know that sometimes love isn’t enough, but our love should defy that. When he saved my life at the Crashdown that day, he risked not only his life, but Isabel and Michael’s, too. He loved me enough to do that, so shouldn’t that be enough?

"You have no right to ask me how I feel
You have no right to speak to me so kind
We can't go on, holding on to time
So now we're living separate lives..."

It’s 3:42 in the early hours of December 6th, and I haven’t slept all night. Usually, when I’m in a lot of pain and cry for a long period of time, the pain seems to go away, drop by drop with the tears. But tonight, I find no solace in crying, no comfort in attempts to sleep. I have cried all night, and yet the pain has not subdued. It’s still there, from the hurt in his eyes as he tells me that we’re not meant to be to now, the aftermath.

The aftermath of passion. It sounds like a title for a cheesy romance novel, but now I will be living it. I’ll have to see him every day at school, at the Crashdown, and I’ll avoid him. Both of us will have to deal with our broken relationship. I had thought that it was strong, but it hadn’t taken much to crush it.

"Well, I have learned to let you go
And if you lost your love for me,
you never let it show, oh no
There was no way to compromise
So now we're living - now we're living - separate lives..."

He left me, and by doing that, he left with a broken heart. I want to love him less for doing that, but I can’t. I could never love him less because he saved my life, risking his own and two others... and by doing that, my world has been a mess.

Yes, my world. Me, Liz Parker. My world is a mess. You would never think that my world could be a wreck, because I had had my life planned out before that day when Max dissolved the bullet in my abdomen. I had never thought of taking life as it comes toward you, and yet after that, I have been doing nothing but that.

He was my world. I had loved him too much. I had never thought about what choices he might choose, because as I look up at the v-shaped constellation, I know that one day, I will have to deal with a loss even bigger than this. One day, Max will not be here to protect me.

"Ooh, it's so difficult, love leads to isolation
So you build that wall - you build that wall
Yes you build that wall - oh yes, you build that wall
And you make it stronger – no..."

I wonder why he chose to break up with me. Was he truly let down by me in the cave? Is it really and truly dangerous for us to be together? Or was he just scared of loving me too much?

I think it was that he was scared. Loving someone is normal, and yet he feels he can never be normal because of his origins. Maybe one day, he will find a way to be the alien he is by birth and the human he is when he loves me.

"You have no right to ask me how I feel - oh no
You have no right to speak to me so kind
Some day I might - I just might - find myself looking in your eyes
But for now, we'll go on living separate lives..."

So, Max and I are broken up. Even after hours of crying and comforting myself, I still have to repeat it over and over, trying to convince myself it really happened. He’s all I’ve thought about tonight... reality hits so hard I just wish he had let me die that day. The love of my life is gone, and I don't know if I'll ever get him back. All I can do is hope.

"Yes for now...we'll go on living...separate lives..."

Back to Area 51 (Section I)