I thought I couldn't write out my feelings today. I thought they were too big to be expressed through words. I thought that I was alone.

I was right, I was right, and I was wrong.

I am reading what others have written, their words that show how beautifully RENT can be loved and honored. They have touched me so deeply I can't even feel the extent of it. I want to, but I can't.

Tonight, RENT will close. The lights will down and the music will fade away. Roger will walk out and start the show for the last time tonight: there will be one last One Song Glory, one last I'll Cover You, one last La Vie Boheme, one last Seasons of Love. The final I'll Cover You (Reprise), the final What You Own, the very last Finale. Thinking about these things is so incredibly painful. It makes me wonder why I ever loved RENT in the first place, if all that waited for me was the grief that won't stop ripping my heart in two.

And then I want to slap myself.

RENT is not something to me that I can say, but I feel in every part of myself. I love it more than I can ever understand, and the feelings that make me cry right now are born of the love that changed me beyond compare. I listen to Seasons of Love, and I envy those who can celebrate. I try, but the pain just keeps breaking through.

That is not to say I can't feel the joy: the happiness and beauty that RENT brings to me, the incredible buzz. I just can't separate those things from the loss: the love that will be tested by time and space and so much else. The love that will endure everything, and emerge stronger than ever.

One of the worst things for me is the loss of Jonathan's world: the East Village that has all but disappeared now, in the dawn of our millennium. RENT kept it alive: now, it has even fewer ties to the present. But now, as I think of it, I begin to understand how people can celebrate.

Twelve and a half years of amazing beauty. Who the hell could ask for anything more? I can't say more, because I know that no matter what I say, others can find the words to say it better.

I love RENT. I love my fellow RENTheads. I always will. And I wouldn't change that for the world.

Thank you all so much. Thank you for everything.